THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


THE  COLLECTION  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINIANA 

PRESENTED  BY 

Family  of  Alfred  Nixon 


CB 
M667m 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032690473 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


Form  No.  A -368 


Travel-  Letters 


from 


Palestine  and  the  East 


By  Rev.  W.  R.   Minter 

Pastor  Presbyterian  Church, 

Lincolnton,  N.  C. 


PRESBYTERIAN  STANDARD  PUBLISHING  CO. 

CHARLOTTE,  N.  C. 

1910 


lAun^ 


m 


TO 
MY  FATHER 

JOHN  R.  MINTER 

THIS  LITTLE  VOLUME 

IS  AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 


^    ^    ^ 


CONTENTS. 


Prefatory  Note,  Rev.  P.  R.  Law,  D.D. 

I.    Lincolnton,   N.    C,   to   Alexandria,   Egypt 9 

11.     Three    Sundays    at    Sea 15 

III.  Twelve    Days    in    Egypt 20 

IV.  Egypt's   Dead    Religion 24 

Y.     Four  Egyptian   Universities 28 

"VT.     Missions  in  Egypt 34 

VII.     Three  Weeks   in   Palestine 38 

VIII.    Palestine   of  Today 42 

IX.     The  Jerusalem  of  1910 49 

X.    Holy  Places   in  Palestine 55 

XI.    High   Places   in  Palestine 62 

XII.    Missions  in  Palestine 69 

XIII.  Mohammedanism    73 

XIV.  Four   Sunsets    79 

XV.    Four  Great  Churches 84 

XVI.    Four  Europeanisms   91 


PREFATORY. 


This  brochure  is  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
unexpected  that  often  happens.  Its  contents  constitute  a 
series  of  letters  by  Rev.  W.  R.  Minter,  Pastor  of  the  Lin- 
eolnton  Presbyterian  Church,  written  during  a  tour  of  the 
Holy  Land  and  Europe,  for  the  Presbyterian  Standard  at 
the  urgent  solicitation  of  its  Editor.  The  tour  itself  was  of 
the  nature  of  the  unexpected,  and  writing  about  it  as  it 
progressed  equally  so.  It  was  a  case  of  reluctant  yielding 
to  urgent  appeal.  No  such  task  had  ever  been  undertaken 
by  the  author  and  naturally  there  was  a  shrinking  from  it. 
But  the  letters  are  written  and  the  thousands  who  read  the 
Standard  were  delighted  and  instructed  by  them.  They 
proved  to  be  entertaining  and  illuminating.  The  story  of 
much  that  had  not  been  the  subject  of  attention  by  other 
writers  was  told  in  a  charming  style.  The  naturalness  of 
the  presentation  made  them  popular,  and  the  truth  about 
people  and  institutions  and  the  face  of  nature  and  the  work* 
of  man  as  seen  were  woven  into  fascinating  story.  The  col- 
umns of  The  Standard  were  enriched  by  them.  As  was  to  be 
expected,  there  was  a  widespread  desire  to  see  them  pub- 
lished. Out  of  this  desire  they  appear  in  this  attractive 
form.  We  congratulate  those  into  whose  hands  this  charm- 
ing series  of  letters  may  fall.  It  will  add  to  the  interest, 
charm  and  instructiveness  of  the  library  of  any  home. 

P.  R.  LAW. 

Charlotte,  N.  C,  October  4,  1910. 


LINCOLNTON,  N.  C,  TO  ALEXANDRIA,  EGYPT. 


Eveiy  land  is  holy  since  God  made,  and  is  in  and  over 
every  land.  Still  there  is  a  sense  in  which  only  one  land  is 
holy.  And  that  because  its  mountains  and  plains  and  cities, 
its  fields^  flocks  and  flowers,  its  peoples  and  laws  and  cus- 
toms, are  woven  into  every  part  of  our  Bible;  because  of 
those  holy  ones  who  lived  and  wrought  there  for  us;  and 
holy  because  of  the  divers  times  and  places  and  manners 
in  which  God  has  here  revealed  Himself  to  His  people,  and 
through  chosen  vessels  to  all  the  world.  But  most  of  all, 
holy  because  of  that  Holy  One  who  here  had  His  cradle 
and  home,  His  workshop,  pulpit  and  school  room,  His 
Golgotha  and  Olivet.  And  because  of  the  future  when  that 
strangest  of  people  shall  turn  unto  Christ,  and  when  in- 
stead of  the  ancient  city  of  Jerusalem,  now  in  ruins,  the 
New  Jerusalem,  which  furnished  the  last  and  perhaps  the 
most  beautiful  picture  of  heaven,  shall  be  let  down  out  of 
heaven,  may  Palestine  truly  be  called  the  Holy  Land. 

To  visit  this  land,  walk  its  ways,  commune  with  its 
choicest  souls  in  their  old  homes  and  in  the  light  of  the 
Land  to  read  the  Book,  is  a  privilege  to  be  coveted  by  any 
one,  and  particularly  by  one  whose  sole  work  is  to  preach 
the  Gospel  here  revealed.  In  the  good  providence  of  God 
this  privilege  came  to  the  writer,  and  after  due  provision 
for  home  and  church,  with  grateful  heart,  he  left  home  on 
March  the  third  for  New  York. 

A  day  here  without  being  maimed  or  killed,  we  felt  rea- 
sonably safe  for  the  rest  of  the  trip. 

Five  days'  delightful  voyage  on  the  splendid  Carmania, 
of  the  Cunard  line,  with  alternating  calm  and  rough  seas, 
with  the  seven  ages  of  man  all  represented,  with  people  of 


every  financial,  physical,  mental  and  doubtless  spiritual  con- 
dition, brought  us  to  the  Azores.  A  *' hot-box''  or  its 
equivalent,  made  us  six  hours  late,  so  that  instead  of  arriv- 
ing at  10  a.  m.,  and  spending  the  day  ashore,  we  did  not 
arrive  till  our  leaving  time  (4  p.  m.)  So  while  the  mails 
were  exchanged  and  other  nautical  things  attended  to,  the 
passengers  gazed  at  the  beautiful  panorama  before  them. 
The  island  is  a  long  mountain  rising  out  of  the  sea,  clad 
in  spring's  freshest  green,  dotted  with  hundreds  of  Portu- 
guese homes,  surrounded  with  the  tiniest,  yet  tidiest  garden 
spots,  while  nearer  the  shore  is  the  little  capital  city  of 
Ponta  Delgada,  skirting  the  harbor  line.  At  a  distance 
these  islands  look  as  if  some  one  had  sliced  off  horizontally 
Hogback  or  Mount  Toxaway,  Ti-yon  Peak  and  other  rrood 
neighboring  mountains  of  North  Carolina  and  set  them  down 
in  the  sea. 

About  five  hundred  miles  southeast  brought  us  to  anchor 
in  the  harbor  of  Funchal,  capital  of  the  Madeira  Islands. 
These  also  belong  to  Portugal  and  are  different  from  the 
Azores,  chiefly  in  that  the  mountains  are  higher  and  more 
rugged,  the  city  larger  and  the  vegetation  more  tropical. 
Here  we  stopped  for  eight  hours  and  each  one  according  to 
his  heart's  desire  spent  the  day.  Of  this  I  shall  speak 
more  particularly  at  another  time. 

Another  five  hundred  miles  and  we  were  sailing  through 
the  Strait  of  Gibraltar.  To  our  South  stood  out  the  Pillar 
of  Hercules  in  the  continent  that  produced  Moses  and  shel- 
tered the  tender  Saviour.  Africa!  Land  under  the  pall  of 
Islam  and  the  spell  of  the  fetich!  Through  long  sickening 
centuries  of  sin,  poor  Africa!  Yet,  as  if  to  silence  the 
gloom  of  the  mental  panorama,  land  also  of  Moffatt  and 
Livingstone  and  Lapsley.  And  yet,  as  I  sat  on  the  hurri- 
cane deck,  watching  the  sun  disappear  behind  the  norther- 
most  mountain  of  Africa,  now  far  to  the  west,  despite  Chris- 
tian South  Africa  and  the  marvels  of  missions  in  Uganda 
and  our  own  Luebo,  the  thought  of  her  still  Christless  mii- 

10 


lions,  put  into  my  heart  man's  appeal  in  the  hour  of  his 
helplessness,  to  One  able  and  mighty  to  save — ^^How  long, 
0  Lord,  how  long?" 

Eight  hours  at  Gibraltar  gave  every  one  opportunity   to 
see  all  that  could  be  seen— the  battleships  in  the  dry  docks 
and  behind  the  sea  wall;  and  the  mighty  mountain  of  rock. 
At  its  base  is  the  cosmopolitan  little  city  with  its  narrow, 
steep   streets,   in   which   are  the   costumes,    languages    and 
wares  of  a  dozen  nations.     The  fortress  occupying  practi- 
cally all  of  the  Rock  is  forbidden  ground  to  the  traveller 
and  so  we  looked  at  it  from  afar.     The  English  soldier  was 
never  out  of  sight,  scores  of  holes  in  the  granite  sides  of 
this  natural  fortress  were  visible  out    of    which    cannons 
sternly  looked,  over  its    top    were  telephone    wires,  signal 
stations  of  every  kind,  while  the  interior  of  the  Rock  is 
known  to  be  honey-combed  with  tunnels,  in  which  is  enough 
ammunition,    guns   and   men    to   demolish    any   navy   which 
might  unbidden  try  to  pass  through  the  strait.     This  Rock 
is  very  valuable,  but  I  am  glad  it  isn't  mine.     We  should 
be  thankful  that  of  all  nations,  England  is  its  owner.   About 
one-half  mile  from  the  northern  extremity  of  the  Rock  is 
the  neutral  zone,  a  strip  one-third  of  a  mile  wide,  without 
house  or  tree,  belonging  to  no  nation  or  individual.     South 
of  this   strip  paces   the  British   sentinel,   while   across   the 
zone  is  Spain,  where  stands  her  swarthy  defenders  dressed 
in  their  uniforms  of  red,  white  and  blue.    Here  is  Linea,  a 
town  of  30,000,  with  one  church  building,  seating  not  over 
500  (if  it  had  pews  in  it;  as  a  fact  there  were  none)   and 
with  its  bull  ring  with  seating  capacity  of  12,000.     Preach- 
ing in  the  morning,  bull  fighting  in  the  afternoon  was  the 
program  for  the  approaching  Easter  Sunday. 

I  looked  into  a  dirty  little  school  room  in  which  all  seemed 
to  be  studying  or  reciting  together.  All  the  drinking  water 
of  this  city  is  hauled  in  jugs  on  backs  of  donkeys  fron:  some 
springs  in  the  country.  A  jug  of  water  costs  two  cents, 
but  judging  from  the  faces  of  the  children  you  would  think 

11 


the  price  was  much  higher.  Here  ignorance  and  dirt,  super- 
stition and  poverty  form  a  quartette  that  ceases  not  day 
nor  night  the  same  dirge  that  this  unhappy  land  has  had 
to  listen  to  for  many,  many  generations,  and  all  this  because 
she  killed  or  exiled  her  only  citizens  who  had  the  power 
to  redeem  her.  Certainly  in  so  far  as  Linea  is  a  sample, 
the  avenging  nemesis  is  not  yet  through  with  Spain.  Though, 
as  many  of  your  readers  know,  there  is  now  in  its  begin- 
ning an  industrial  revival  in  Spain,  which  let  us  hope,  will 
also  not  stop  short  of  an  intellectual  and  spiritual  awaken- 
ing, too. 

Nearly  nine  hundred  miles  farther,  in  sight  most  of  the 
way,  of  the  coast  of  Spain,  France  or  Italy,  and  we  were  in 
Italy's  chief  seaport — Genoa.  Amid  an  amazing  mass  of 
shipping,  our  tender  wound  its  way  to  shore.  Of  course, 
among  several  interesting  sights,  we  visited  the  house  where 
Columbus  is  said  to  have  been  born.  When  I  saw  that 
steep,  narrow,  winding  and  dirty  street  in  which  this  house 
is  located,  I  didn't  blame  him  for  wanting  to  find  a  place 
where  there  was  more  room  and  less  dirt,  nor  for  taking 
great  risks  to  do  it.  Campo  Santo  is  the  beautiful  cemetery 
of  the  Catholics  in  Genoa.  Outside  are  separate  grave- 
yards for  Protestants,  Jews,  Greeks  and  those  of  no  creed. 
We  can't  describe  the  beauty  of  this  place,  even  if  we  had 
no  limit  as  to  time  and  space.  It  is  a  long  marble  colon- 
nade, enclosing  a  square,  in  which  the  poor  are  buried, 
while  on  both  sides  of  this  marble  gallery  are  the  tombs  of 
the  rich.  Each  tomb  is  an  artistic  design  in  faultlessly 
white  marble  and  of  exquisite  workmanship.  The  tomb  of 
a  father,  for  instance,  has  on  a  high  marble  base  his  head 
carved  in  perfect  likeness,  while  before  him  stands  his 
widow  lifting  their  baby  to  kiss  the  father,  while  beside  the 
mother  kneels  a  larger  child — all  this  in  marble  of  snow! 
And  there  were  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  these,  some 
with  fresh  flowers,  some  with  funeral  lamps  burning  before 
them,  some  with  relatives  bowed  in  prayer  about  them.     It 

12 


was  in  part  beautiful,  in  part  pathetic  and  sad,  and  as  I 
walked  over  and  among  all  these  tombs,  I  found  the  un- 
bidden tear  in  the  eye  while  there  came  to  mind  that 
beautiful   poem,   '^0   why   should   the   spirit   of  mortal    be 

proud "     If  the  Catholics  err  greatly  in  extravagant 

cost  and  attention  and  in  other  ways  of  showing  respect  for 
their  <iead,  do  not  the  broom-straw  and  brairs  in  hundreds 
of  church  and  town  graveyards  in  our  Southland  reproach 
us  for  our  neglect? 

On  such  a  trip,  there  are  times  of  pleasantry  when  any 
slight  thing  out  of  the  ordinary  seems  especially  funny.  We 
have  had  most  fun,  I  believe,  with  the  language.  In  going 
over  a  villa  at  Linea,  where  the  keeper  spoke  only  Span- 
ish, one  of  the  ladies  wishing  to  be  shown  the  parlor  (the 
house  was  unoccupied),  went  through  a  series  of  signs  which 
if  not  readily  understood  was  perfectly  explosive  to  the 
rest  of  us.  In  a  restaurant  in  Naples,  I  tried  to  tell  our 
waiter  (who  spoke  only  Italian)  to  bring  me  the  head- 
waiter  (who  did  speak  English).  With  a  bow  he  went  and 
was  soon  back  with  a  schooner,  or  some  kind  of  a  ship, 
filled  to  the  gunwales  with  beer!  And  th'e  laugh  was  on  me. 
In  Genoa,  four  of  us  took  a  drive,  guiding  our  cabman  by 
a  map  of  the  city  and  by  calling  to  him  when  we  wished  to 
return  to  our  ship,  **Nave  Carmania,''  ''Carmania  porto!*' 
etc.  From  all  of  this,  I  fear  the  humor  will  have  leaked 
out  before  it  gets  to  North  Carolina,  but  to  us  in  its  Italian 
setting,  to  put  it  mildly,  it  kept  off  the  blues. 

Besides  the  language,  the  different  kinds  of  money  afford 
no  end  of  fun.  We  already  have  had  English,  Spanish, 
Italian  and  French  money,  and  tomorrow  will  add  to  our 
list  Egyptian.  It  is  a  daily  sight  to  see  one  of  our  party 
who  has  had  one  of  his  Travellers'  checks  cashed  in  some 
foreign  money  bring  up  a  handful  of  coins  and  call  in  all 
his  neighbors  to  help  him  count  it. 

The  most  interesting  day's  journey  was  reserved  for  the 
last  days.     On  the  20th  we  passed  within  a  mile  of  Strom- 

13 


boli,  a  small  mountainous  island,  with  a  peaceful  little  vil- 
lage at  its  base,  while  out  of  its  crater  near  the  top  poured 
a  volume  of  smoke,  similar  to  the  smoke  from  the  chimney 
of  one  of  our  large  cotton  mills.  Then  through  the  Strait 
of  Messina,  with  its  Scylla  and  Charybdis,  and  the  cities  of 
Reggio  and  Messina,  so  recently  destroyed  by  earthquake. 

From  our  ship  both  cities  were  close  at  hand,  and  the 
finest  buildings,  comprising  most  of  the  business  center  of 
Messina,  could  be  seen  to  be  still  in  ruins,  while  at  each  end 
of  this  mass  of  ruins  were  hundreds  of  electric  lights  in  the 
early  evening.  In  time  the  whole  ruined  section  will  doubt- 
less be  rebuilt.    They  never  get  in  a  hurry  over  here. 

As  I  write  this  **  Finally, '^  we  are  less  than  twelve  hours 
from  Alexandria,  and  if  these  rambling  remarks  seem  very, 
very  long,  I  plead  in  extenuation  of  my  guilt  the  fact  that 
from  Lincolnton  to  Alexandria  is,  in  the  language  of  a  little 
North  Carolina  four-year-old,  "a  far  piece." 


14 


THREE  SUNDAYS  AT  SEA. 

From  New  York  to  Alexandria  is  an  eighteen  days'  voyage 
on  our  ship.  The  time  lost  in  making  five  port  calls  en 
route  as  well  as  the  time  taken  in  deflecting  far  to  the  south 
to  touch  at  Madeira  and  then  to  the  north  of  a  direct  course 
to  call  at  Genoa,  makes  the  trip  longer  in  miles  and  days 
than  a  direct  route  of  continuous  sailing. 

In  these  eighteen  days  are  three  Sundays,  of  (which  I  wish 
especially  to  write. 

Our  first  Sunday  was  our  second  day  at  sea.  We  had  just 
time  enough,  after  watching  New  York,  with  its  wonderful 
environs,  creep  away  in  the  west,  to  find  ourselves,  as  re- 
lated to  our  new  home. 

Sunday  dawned  with  fair  sky,  calm  sea  and  happy  pas- 
sengers. The  orderliness  throughout  the  day,  the  refraining 
from  the  indoor  and  deck  games  so  popular  on  week  days, 
and  the  degree  of  quiet  and  even  reverence  manifested  con- 
stituted an  agreeable  surprise. 

The  chief  or  legal  service  was  conducted  by  the  Captain, 
who,  assisted  by  the  Purser,  read  the  Church  of  England 
service.  They  read  it  well,  too;  though  I  consider  that  the 
Captain  won  out  over  the  Purser  by  a  few  lengths.  Both 
their  hymns  and  tunes  were  unfamiliar  to  me,  but  I  enjoyed 
the  singing,  which  was  largely  done  by  the  crew.  Indeed, 
I  enjoyed  very  heartily  the  whole  service.  The  crew 
occupied  the  middle  of  the  dining  saloon,  while  the  passen- 
gers were  on  both  sides.  A  collection  was  taken  for  the 
Seamen's  Charities  of  New  York  and  Liverpool. 

Simultaneously  with  this  service  was  a  service  by  the 
Roman  Catholics  in  another  part  of  the  ship.  Indeed,  on 
every  day  the  Romanists  have  held  services  at  will  from  4 

15 


a.  m.  to  10  p.  m.  And  yet  permission  for  a  Sunday  evening 
service  to  be  conducted  by  a  minister  of  one  of  the  largest 
denominations  in  the  United  States  was  refused.  This 
seemed  an  unnecessary,  un-American,  not  to  say  un-Chris- 
tian,  restriction.  If  the  English  are  dense,  they  are  not  so 
dense  but  that  they  know  who  to  refuse,  and  who  not  to 
refuse.  A  refusal  to  Rome  to  hold  its  services  means  a 
boycott  of  every  Cunard  ship;  a  refusal  to  Protestants 
means  nothing. 

The  second  Sunday  we  were  due  at  Funchal,  the  capital 
of  the  Madeira  Islands.  An  early  breakfast  was  provided 
that  a  good  ( ?)  start  might  be  got  by  all  who  desired  to 
take  in  the  sights.  And  practically  all  seemed  to  desire 
just  that  thing.  Here  was  our  ship  anchored  from  early 
morning  till  4  p.  m.  Yonder  to  the  north  was  an  entrancin;;! 
view  of  a  mighty  mountain  rising  steeply  out  of  the  sea, 
clothed  in  the  glistening  green  of  an  early  tropical  morn- 
ing, dotted  with  picturesque  Spanish-looking  houses  up  the 
mountain  side  and  with  the  city  of  Funchal  fringing  the 
water.  And  it  was  Sunday  morning !  And  here  arose  among 
us,  a  question  not  new,  to  be  sure,  yet  not  unimportant — 
the  ethics  of  Sunday  sight-seeing.  Not  to  go,  was  largely 
to  miss  seeing  yonder  fairy  island  and  perhaps  to  be  branded 
a  hypercritical  Sabbatarian.  To  go  was  to  ride  in  the  oxen 
sled,  to  take  the  funicular  car  to  the  top  of  the  mountain, 
have  yourself  kodaked  in  some  pretty  dell,  and  slide  down 
the  slick  plane  of  the  mountain  side,  a  la  toboggan,  and 
^'have  more  fun  than  a  barrel  of  m.onkeys,^'  as  one  ex- 
pressed it. 

To  many,  very  many  (alas!  let  it  be  said)  this  situation 
presented  no  question.  The  possibility  of  their  declining  to 
go  was  beyond  their  wildest  imagination!  Why,  of  course, 
they  were  going.  And  they  did — and  many  of  these  claimed 
to  be  disciples  of  Him  who,  while  He  ''broke"  the  Sabbath 
law  to  heal  a  poor  fellow  and  thereby  kept  it,  did  not  so  far 
as  the  record  shows,  lead  a  Sunday  excursion  to  Hermon's 

16 


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Heights  or  elsewhere.  To  another  set,  their  anticipated 
romp  (including,  in  addition  to  things  aforementioned,  the 
purchase  of  various  kinds  of  souvenirs),  required  a  little 
^'explanifying."  And  as  a  few  listened,  we  knew  not 
whether  we  grieved  more  at  heart  or  laughed  more  at  the 
stunts  of  these  logical  and  ethical  acrobats.  Quoth  one: 
**I  am  on  this  trip  to  learn  all  I  can  and  to  improve  myself, 
and  therefore  I  must  go.''  ''It's  our  only  chance,"  chirped 
another.  ''Why,  didn't  Jesus  say  the  Sabbath  was  made 
for  man?"  said  a  Sunday  school  teacher,  in  a  convincing 
tone.  "This  is  a  case  of  the  ox  in  the  ditch,"  said  a  clerical 
brother,  as  he  started  off  with  his  kodak  to  prize  the  poor 
beast  out.  That  poor  ox  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  martyrs. 
Every  week  he  is  pushed  in  the  ditch  that  the  ox-heroes 
may  rescue  him.  But  all  these  went,  too.  Among  the  many 
marvels  of  this  wonderful  age,  few,  if  any,  can  surpass  the 
agility,  the  adaptability  and  the  gutterperchability  of  the 
conscience  of  the  average  church  member.  And  a  few  of 
us,  among  whom  was  a  Presbyterian  elder  from  Rochester, 
N.  Y.,  and  one  or  two  more  of  our  boat  circle,  had  a  delight- 
ful, quiet  Sunday  morning  on  the  ship,  till  about  10  o'clock, 
w^hen  we  went  ashore  to  Sunday  school  and  preaching.  Now 
wasn't  that  romantic?  I  went  to  Sunday  school  in  the  mis- 
sion of  our  Northern  Methodist  Church,  where  I  was  warmly 
welcomed,  and  enjoyed  the  English  part  of  the  service,  and 
even  that  in  an  unknown  tongue — ^Portuguese. 

I  then  went  to  the  little  Scotch  Presbyterian  church, 
where  in  the  mornings  all  the  service  is  in  English.  The 
order  of  worship  is  exactly  the  same  as  we  have  in  Lincoln- 
ton,  save  that  the  doxology  was  not  sung  in  the  beginning- 
The  congregation  was  small,  the  sermon  or  address  on  the 
Bible  in  presenting  the  British  Bible  Society,  was  ordinary, 
yet  had  in  it  sound  and  precious  truths,  the  hymns  (not  the 
singing)  were  beautiful  and  devotional,  and  I  felt  it  was 
good  to  be  there.  I  was  greatly  interested  in  these  two 
foreign  mission  stations,  the  first  I  ever  came  into  actual 

17 


touch  with.  But  of  this  I  cannot  speak  now.  My  walk  back 
to  the  ship  took  me  through  a  public  garden  shaded  with 
stately  palms  and  magnolias,  and  perfumed  with  the  mingled 
sweetness  of  ten  thousand  flowers  blooming  at  my  feet. 
Truly  ^^  every  prospect  pleases. '^  Then  four  or  five  blocks 
past  stores  and  shops  of  every  kind  wide  open,  and  their 
tawdry  wares  piled  on  the  sidewalks,  while  the  iSabbath  air 
was  rent  with  a  hundred  profane  tongues,  hawking  with 
mongrel  English  their  useless  tinsel.  Truly  again,  ^^and 
only  man  is  vile."  Back  on  ship,  in  quiet  and  with  my 
well-beloved  New  York  elder,  we  had  not  a  pleasureless  nor 
a  profitless  Sunday  afternoon. 

To  have  written  as  I  have  written  may  be  interpreted  by 
the  casual  reader  that  the  writer  is  assuming  to  himself  a 
superior  personal  merit.  This  he  distinctly  disavows.  He 
did  no  more  than  from  a  child  he  had  been  taught  was  the 
law  of  God.  This  precept  of  childhood,  received  in  faith, 
after  a  careful  observation,  some  study  and  more  reflection, 
so  far  from  being  weakened  in  the  writer's  conviction,  has 
become  more  and  more  confirmed.  A  holy  eye  found  very 
much  of  imperfection  in  all  of  us  that  day,  though  I  trust 
He  also  saw  in  many  an  earnest  desire  and  effort  to  walk 
in  His  statutes.  That  evening  and  the  following  day  there 
was  a  general  and  more  or  less  serious  discussion  of  the 
Sabbath.  And  some  believed,  some  twere  obdurate,  while 
others  said  they  would  hear  of  this  matter  further. 

The  afternoon  and  night  before  our  third  Sunday  drench- 
ing rains  fell  and  driving  winds  lashed  with  waves  the  sea- 
wall of  the  harbor  of  Naples,  behind  which  our  ship  lay 
sheltered,  while  an  army  of  men  coaled  our  ship  and  the 
passengers  were  permitted  a  few  hours  ashore  to  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  city.  In  contrast  with  the  storm  of  Saturday 
how  symbolic  of  the  Day  of  Rest  was  the  calm  of  the  next 
morning.  Upon  awakening  we  found  ourselves  steaming 
d(ywn  the  southwestern  coast  of  Italy  on  a  waveless  sea, 
with  a  cloudless  sky  and  in  a  flood   of  glorious   sunshine. 

18 


Another  thing  that  heightened  our  appreciation  of  this  Sab- 
bath's peace  was  the  violent  contrast  between  the  nan'ow, 
noisy  streets  of  Naples,  filled  with  the  jabbering  jargon  of 
ten  thousand  nimble-tongued  sons  of  Italy,  gesticulating 
and  articulating,  too,  as  if  the  town  was  afire,  and  the  quiet 
and  reverence  ashipboard,  so  inviting  to  worship. 

Still  another  thing  that  added  to  the  quiet  of  this  Sun- 
day was  the  fact  that  at  Genoa  and  Naples,  fully  two-thirds 
of  our  passengers  left  us.  And  there  was  the  same  absten- 
tion from  all  games,  to  which  I  referred  in  speaking  of  our 
first  Sunday. 

The  Catholic  and  English  church  services  were  held  at 
the  same  time  as  usual. 

Among  the  worshippers  yesterday  morning  was  Mrs. 
Grover  Cleveland,  who  boarded  our  ship  at  Genoa,  and  is 
going  to  Alexandria. 

During  the  afternoon  each  one  did  that  which  was  right 
in  his  own  eyes.  Conversation  on  deck  or  in  drawing  rooms, 
books,  papers,  and  a  good  many  Bibles  engaged  these  sunny 
hours.  For  myself,  I  preferred  to  read  my  Bible  in  my 
room.  While  later  in  the  afternoon,  in  a  quiet  and  favorite 
comer  of  the  topmost  deck,  looking  over  the  blue  of  the 
Mediterranean,  clothed  upon  with  the  glory  of  the  Italian 
sky— a  sea  over  which  during  three  thousand  years  have 
sailed  millions  of  ships,  merchant  crafts,  fighting  squadrons, 
royal  barges,  and  a  certain  insignificant  ship  bearing,  how- 
ever, a  most  significant  passenger — I  read  and thought. 

I  think  I  thought  most  of  this  last  ship,  its  noted  passenger 
and  this  passenger's  great  God.    At  least  I  hope  I  did. 


19 


TWELVE  DAYS  IN  EGYPT. 


One  in  Alexandria,  nine  in  and  near  Cairo,  and  two  in 
Port  Said — a  short  stay,  true,  yet  long  enough  to  bulge  the 
eyes  with  seeing.  After  riding  into  harbor  at  Alexandria 
under  the  beautiful  arch  of  a  before-breakfast  rainbow,  we 
were  greeted  by  our  dragoman,  Soliman  Moussa  (Solomon 
Moses).  He  is  well  named,  for  he's  both  wise  and  meek, 
and  to  these  qualities  adds  an  imagination  that  is  equal  to 
any  emergency.  What  he  doesn't  know,  he  tells  any  way; 
what  no  one  knows,  he  tells  with  unctuous  assurance.  One 
of  the  first  things  a  traveller  in  the  East  learns  is  to  use  his 
sifter,  else  he  will  eat  more  bran  than  bread.  But  I  don't 
mean  to  go  back  on  Solomon.    He  is  the  best  in  Egypt. 

With  him  to  guide  and  to  do  our  fussing  and  fighting  over 
^^backsheesth"  with  the  Arabs,  we  saw  the  conventional, 
yet  wonderful  sights  seen  by  all  tourists.  We  had  the  two 
last  days  for  independent  action  and  I  devoted  them  to  see- 
ing the  state  hospital  and  prison,  the  new  government  school 
and  university,  and  the  missionary  work  in  the  city. 

Egypt,  so  far  as  we  have  visited  (and  we  speak  only  of 
this  section),  is  a  land  without  a  hill  or  a  mountain,  with- 
out a  spring  and  virtually  without  a  well  (well  water  is 
brackish,  so  they  prefer  the  dirty  water  of  the  Nile),  a  land 
without  a  pine  or  oak,  hickory  or  poplar,  maple  or  ash 
(indeed  without  forests  of  any  kind,  though  there  are  a  few 
scattered  trees),  and  so  a  land  w^th  scarcely  a  wooden  house 
and  without  a  gable  roof;  yet  this  great  valley  has  brought 
down  to  it  every  j^ear  the  fertility  of  far  distant  hills  and 
mountains,  and  is  beautiful  with  its  gi'een  fields  of  clover 
and  wheat,  its  roads  and  canals  lined  with  palms,  acacias, 
sycamores  and  orange  trees. 

20 


Here  the  old  and  the  new  meet.  In  this,  the  largest  city 
of  Africa,  I  have  daily  seen  the  finest  express  trains  beside 
long  camel  trains.  The  bray  of  the  donkey  and  the  honk  of 
the  automobile  mingle  with  other  inharmonious  noises  in 
the  street,  while  the  mummies  of  Egypt's  old  kings  and 
legions  of  their  subjects  almost  jostle  the  modern  tourists  in 
the  aisles  of  the  museum.  Beside  the  lock-ballasted,  double- 
tracked  railway,  we  saw  as  we  sped  by,  hundreds  of  flocks 
of  sheep,  watched  by  shepherds  whose  crook  and  flowing 
robe  took  us  back  to  the  time  of  Abraham;  while  under  the 
wires  over  which  was  silently  speeding  the  world's  latest 
news,  the  humble  fellah  drove  his  buffalo  oxen  as  with  a 
crooked  stick  he  plows  his  crop,  as  his  fathers  did  four 
thousand  years  ago.  In  this  age  of  machinery,  and  of  so 
many  modern  implements,  it  is  almost  incrediible  that  these 
farmers  have  neither  buggy,  wagon  nor  cart,  neither  horse 
nor  mule  (instead  is  the  camel  and  donkey) ;  no  implements, 
that  I  have  seen,  after  several  trips  in  the  country,  save  the 
one-handled  plow,  the  short-handled  hoe,  a  hand  scythe  and 
then  two  hands  of  almost  infinite  patience. 

Being  a  land,  largely  without  minerals,  timber  and  manu- 
facture, these  people  fall  back  upon  the  Nile  and  the  tourist. 

In  front  of  our  hotel  moves  a  daily  panorama  of  every 
Eastern  race,  costume  and  condition,  It  is  interesting  to 
note  the  stages  in  the  evolution  by  which  an  Arab  changes 
bis  flowing  robe  for  European  coat  and  trousers.  You  see 
all  these  stages  at  once  at  any  hour.  He  changes  all  but  his 
fez;  that  he  holds  on  to  as  if  it  were  part  of  his  anatomy. 

As  to  government,  Egypt  nominally  is  under  Turkey  (for 
which  name  she  pays  about  four  million  dollars  annually), 
but  really,  as  your  readers  are  well  aware,  is  under  England, 
for  which  trouble  she  is  paid  as  the  Philippines  pay  us. 
England's  reward  is  the  envy  and  suspicion  of  Europe,  and 
the  ingratitude  and  a  considerable  amount  of  animosity  from 
her  thankless  protege.  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  able  to  un- 
derstand the  tangled  web  of  politics  here,  but  I  have  seen 

21 


on  every  hand  enough  not  only  to  •warrant,  but  even  to 
compel  the  exclamation,  ^^ Great  is  England!"  The  patent- 
medicine  man's  pictures  of  ^* before  and  after  taking"  are 
not  a  circumstance  to  bankrupt  and  all  but  hopelessly  sick 
Egypt,  before  and  after  taking  her  twenty-seven  years' 
treatment  of  Anglasia.  Soap,  sanitation  and  disinfection, 
modem  prisons,  hospitals  and  schools,  justice,  dignity  and 
discipline,  new  streets,  new-made  laws  to  govern  them  and 
new-made  men  to  walk  them — all  this  and  more  bear  the 
mark  of  the  Briton — yet  lest  you  misunderstand  me,  may  I 
add,  that  great  as  is  her  work,  very,  very  much  more  like 
it  remains  to  be  done. 

Let  it  be  said  also  in  justification  of  these  people,  that 
like  all  other  nations,  they  desire  to  govern  themselves,  and. 
as  is  usually  the  case,  they  think  they  are  competent  for 
this  task  before  they  really  are.  Then,  too,  as  if  the  inter- 
mittent vassalage  of  this  hoary  people  to  every  great  world- 
power  for  four  thousand  years  or  more,  were  not  enough, 
she  has  until  recently  suffered  most  unjustly  from  unprin- 
cipled traders  and  from  criminals  of  Christian  Europe! 
These  classes  would  commit  every  kind  of  crime,  for  which 
they  would  be  tried  by  the  consul  of  their  country,  which 
usually  meant  no  trial.  The  government  was  sued  for  heavy 
sums  in  those  days  as  readily  as  a  North  Carolinian  sues 
the  railroad.  On  one  occasion,  for  instance,  when  receiving 
a  European,  the  Sultan  is  said  to  have  told  one  of  his  at- 
tendants, ''Please  shut  that  door,  for  if  this  gentleman 
catches  a  cold  it  will  cost  me  ten  thousand  pounds."  I 
mention  this  to  show  that  it  is  not  an  easy  thing  for  an 
Egyptian,  so  long  accustomed  to  being  pillaged  by  for- 
eigners, to  believe  England  to  be  a  benefactor  rather  than 
a  plunderer. 

But  talk  about  problems!  Here  they  are— industrial, 
sanitary,  political,  racial,  intellectual  and  religious.  I  know 
we  have  more  at  home  than  we  are  solving  right,  but  com- 

22 


parativel}',  we  have  no  problems.  Or  they  are  problems  that 
differ  from  these  as  the  first  sum  in  addition  differs  from 
trigonometry  (I  believe  that's  as  far  as  I  got  in  mathe- 
matics). And  yet  nothing  is  too  hard  for  God;  especially 
in  the  day  of  His  power  when  His  people  become  willing. 
There  is,  I  believe,  amid  all  these  problems,  more  real  hope 
in  Egypt  today  than  at  any  time  in  all  her  tragic  centuries. 


23 


EGYPT'S  DEAD  RELIGION. 


I  have  neither  time  nor  desire  to  be  critical  or  exhaust- 
ive. I  have  nio  information  to  impart  that  may  not  be 
found  in  the  libraries  of  many  of  the  Standard's  readers. 
My  purpose  is  rather  to  write  simply  and  popularly,  some 
of  the  impressions  and  reflections  that  fought  their  way 
through  my  brain  as  I  stood  in  the  presence  of  this  dead 
past. 

Here  was  my  first  personal  introduction  to  a  religion  that 
is  dead.  It  certainly  is  dead  and  I  certainly  am  glad.  And 
like  many  lother  travelers  in  this  land,  I  have  been  making 
a  post-mortem  examination.  There  was  not  time  to  go  to 
the  greatest  ruins  at  Kamak;  besides  there  were  as  many 
tombs  and  temples  in  the  vicinity  of  Cairo  as  I  could  stand. 
"We  went  to  the  site  of  Moses'  Alma  Mater  where  stands  a 
granite  obelisk  as  the  last  remains  of  this  long-defunct  in- 
stitution. No  religion  can  exist  without  some  kind  of  school 
and  here  instead  of  teachers  and  students  were  clover  and 
camels. 

The  tomb  (or  pyramid)  of  Cheops  was  \isited  and  climb- 
ed, though  I  did  not  explore  the  interior.  Another  d&j  took 
us  twenty  miles  or  more  to  the  pyramid  of  Sakkara,  which 
lies  a  mile  out  in  the  Lybian  desert.  A  mile  farther  in  the 
desert,  far  under  the  yellow  sand  are  the  tombs  of  kings  and 
of  their  gods.  Even  a  king's  tomb,  with  all  the  elaborate 
hieroglyphics,  though  full  of  interest,  was  less  interesting 
to  me  than  the  tombs  of  the  sacred  bulls.  In  long  corri- 
dors of  stone,  lined  on  both  sides  with  large  niches  were  the 
marble  sarcophagi  where  these  gods  were  buried  at  their 
decease!  The  tombs  of  these  gods  are  all  empty  now. 
Stacks  of  bones  in  different  museums — not  a  resurrection — 

24 


is  the  explanation.  Such  a  picture  of  death  I  have  never 
seen — tombs,  far  underground,  of  mummied  kings  and 
princes,  marble  vaults  in  which  reposed  for  centuries  the 
bones  of  these  kings'  gods;  over  all  these,  crumbling  tem- 
ples and  pyramids,  and  again  over  and  around  all  these,  a 
horizon  of  sterile  desert  sands,  and  again  coverings  over 
the  desert  of  a  rainless  sky  and  a  scorching  sun!  And  as 
if  to  make  more  complete  the  loverthrow  of  these  gods — 
beetles,  cats  and  bulls — their  mummies  or  skeletons  were 
made  to  line  themselves  up  in  the  museum  in  Cairo,  where 
we  irreverently  inspected  them,  while  on  every  corner  the 
street  huckster  peddled  their  images.  In  this  setting,  the 
fact  of  our  God  being  still  alive,  being  Life  and  imparting 
life  seemed  a  more  precious  possession  than  ever  before. 
From  these  pitiful  tombs  I  looked  with  new  gratitude  unto 
Him  who  saith,  ^'Behold,  I  am  alive  for  ever  more." 

And  there  comes  this  query:  Can  we  Christians  of  today 
prove  that  four  thousand  years  from  now  our  religion  will 
not  end  in  a  similar  delusion?  We  believe  it  will  not  so 
end  and  we  do  well  so  to  believe.  It  is  capable  of  proof 
that  amounts  to  a  demonstration.  Would  it  hurt  those  who 
read  this  to  marshal  some  of  the  evidences  lof  Christianity, 
or  to  examine  well  the  foundations  upon  which  they  are 
building? 

To  see  the  massiveness  of  these  temples  and  pyramids  is 
to  admire  their  mighty  builders.  To  quarry,  transport  500 
miles  and  erect  a  solid  granite  shaft  60  feet  long  and  at 
one  end  ten  feet  square,  elicits  our  wonder.  Figure  after 
figure,  some  in  marble,  some  in  limestone,  some  in  wood,  all 
thousands  of  years  old,  seemed  just  about  to  speak  to  me 
last  Tuesday  in  the  museum.  The  architecture  of  these 
people  and  their  art,  their  mathematics  and  astronomy;  their 
ideas  of  a  resurrection,  judgment  and  future  life,  compel  us 
to  regard  them  a  remarkably  learned  people.  Yet  with  all 
this  wisdom  they  knew  not  the  true  God  but  ''became  vain 
in  their  imaginations  and  their  foolish  heart  was  darkened." 

25 


The  wisdom  of  man  today,  great  as  it  is,  unaided  by  the 
revelation  of  God,  is  foredoomed  to  as  disastrous  an  end. 
Man  today  can,  unaided  by  Grod,  build  a  flying  machine,  as 
these  people  thus  unaided  built  a  pyramid,  but  just  as  these 
people  failed  in  their  unaided  wisdom  to  find  the  true  God, 
so  must  fail  the  wisest  man  today,  unaided  by  revelation. 
To  see  these  mummied  hands,  which  when  in  life  did  their 
best  to  fashion  the  gods  they  w^orshipped,  makes  God's 
divers  and  luminous  revelations  of  Himself  more  pricelessly 
precious  than  ever.  A  passenger  on  a  strong  ship  that  has 
weathered  the  gale,  feels  doubly  thankful  when  he  sees 
other  voyagers  on  some  unseaworthy  craft,  lie  dead  among 
the  wreckage  after  the  storm. 

As  we  have  intimated  the  creed  of  this  dead  religion  con- 
tained some  articles  of  faith  that  are  true  and  worthy  of 
all  acceptation  and  their  lives  show  deeds  and  traits  de- 
serving of  our  emulation.  They  looked  upon  this  life  as  but 
a  preparation  to  live  and  in  their  way,  (which  alas!  was  a 
false  way),  many  of  them  spent  it  with  a  fidelity,  with  a 
patience  and  painstaking  that  we  so  often  fail  to  attain 
unto.  Their  religion  taught  them  to  prepare  for  death,  and 
over  four  hundred  million  embalmed  bodies  and  all  but  ever- 
lasting tombs  to  contain  these  mummies,  are  the  pathetic 
evidence  of  their  diligence!  The  stress  they  put  on  the 
eternal  beyond  is  pathetically  and  pitifully  told  by  the  mum- 
mied pigeons,  turkeys,  bread  and  cakes  they  were  wont  to 
lay  on  the  tomb  of  their  dead.  With  these,  his  body  would 
feed  upon  when  it  came  to  life  and  be  strengthened  to  go 
on  its  new  journey.  In  the  Cairo  museum  we  saw  some  of 
these  fowls  and  cakes,  but  they  looked  far  from  appetizing. 
Shall  we  to  whom  God  has  so  clearly  revealed,  and  for 
whom  our  Saviour  has  especially  prepared  our  eternal  Home 
show  less  interest  and  fidelity  in  entering  through  His  grace  1 
And  how  much  better  to  insure  our  resurrection  is  a  Sav- 
iour than  a  pyramid.  Shall  the  disciples  of  the  latter  out 
vie  us  who  trust  in  the  former? 

26 


Here  in  these  ruins  is  tragedy!  Not  partial,  but  total 
tragedy.  Upon  the  stage  of  Egypt  before  the  curtain  was 
rung  down,  closing  the  awful  drama,  all  lay  dead!  All- 
men  and  gods,  homes  and  temples,  things  temporal  and  eter- 
nal, principles  and  practices — all  dead.  Seeing  and  touch- 
ing this  corpse  of  a  long-dead  religion,  a  richer  meaning 
came  into  these  words  familiar  to  us  all:  ''Wherein  God, 
willing  more  abundantly,  to  show  unto  the  heirs  of  promise, 
the  immutability  of  his  counsel,  confirmed  it  by  an  oath: 
that  by  two  immutable  things  in  which  it  was  impossible  for 
God  to  lie,  we  might  have  a  strong  consolation,  who  have 
fled  for  refuge  to  lay  hold  upon  the  hope  set  before  us: 
which  hope  we  have  as  an  anchor  of  the  soul,  both  sure  and 
steadfast,  and  which  entereth  into  that  within  the  veil.'' 


27 


FOUR  EGYPTIAN  UNIVERSITIES. 


Who  would  know  well  any  land,  with  not  only  its  past, 
but  also  its  future,  must  know  its  schools.  Above  its  bat- 
tlefields and  tombs,  in  interest  to  me  were ,  the  schools  of 
Egypt,  and  of  four  typical  institutions  I  wish  briefly  to 
write.  There  are  the  On,  Al-Azhar,  National  and  Presby- 
terian Universities,  which  may  be  described  respectively  as 
heathen,  pagan,  religionless  and  Christian.  The  first  be- 
longs to  the  hoary  past  and  has  long  ago  closed  its  doors. 
The  other  three  are  open  today — Al-Azhar  being  over  a 
thousand  years  old,  the  Presbyterian  College  about  two  score 
and  the  National  University  two  years  old. 

Seven  miles  west  of  Cairo  on  the  wide  and  fertile  plain 
of  the  Nile  is  the  site  where  four  thousand  years  ago  stood 
•the  greatest  university  of  ancient  Egypt.  Clover  was  blos- 
soming there  rather  than  learning,  and  instead  of  students 
eagerly  devouring  Astrology  and  other  early  Oriental  pab- 
ulum, camels  were  lazily  munching  the  new-mown  hay. 
Here  in  the  city  of  On  (Gen.  41:45),  or  in  the  tongue  of  the 
Greeks,  Heliopolis,  was  once  one  of  the  capitals  of  Egypt. 
Here  stood  in  those  far-away  days  a  mighty  university  that 
largely  molded  Egypt,  which  in  turn  molded  the  thought  of 
the  world.  Here  stood  a  great  temple  to  the  Sun  and  here 
priests  or  professors,  learned  in  all  the  knowledge  of  that 
day,  devotees  and  propagandists  of  the  worship  of  Rah  sat 
as  center  of  enquiring  j^ouths.  In  this  clover  field  once  as- 
tronomy, mathematics,  geology,  rhetoric  and  the  tenets  and 
rites  of  the  Sun-God  were  taught.  Here  were  mingled  the 
wonders  of  that  quaint  lore,  much  of  which  is  now  lost, 
with  an  abominably  material  and  animal  heathenism.  Here 
flourished  a  civilization  according  to  the  Sun-God   (the  god 

28 


who  is  the  sun,  not  who  made  it)  and  here  it  lies  buried  be- 
side the  other  relies  of  Rah.  We  had  quite  an  interesting 
visit  to  these  one-time  sacred  and  learned  precincts.  The 
campus  is  level  and,  when  we  saw  it,  green  with  wheat  or 
red  with  ripening  clover.  The  old  walls  around  the  campus, 
though  tumbled  down,  are  clearly  to  be  seen,  forming  a  ter- 
race which  still  encloses  these  once  literary  roods  of  earth. 
A  single  survivor  of  this  hoary  past  towers  above  the  trees. 
It  is  a  granite  obelisk,  sixty-six  feet  high,  ten  feet  square 
at  the  bottom  and  gradually  tapering  to  the  top,  of  one 
natural  piece  of  stone,  all  four  faces  with  hieroglyphics, 
said  to  extol  its  builders. 

Many  similar  monuments  adorned  this  campus  once,  but 
one  by  one  they  have  been  pillaged  by  conquerors  or  given 
away  by  generous  Khedives  till  only  one  lonesome  looking 
one  remains  to  tell  the  tale.  On  this  greensward  romped, 
studied  and  grew  into  womanhood  Asenath,  the  charming 
daughter  of  Prof.  Potipherah.  And  in  these  classic  pre- 
cincts Joseph  courted,  won  and  wed  the  old  professor's 
daughter.  But  the  chief  distinction  this  old  university  has 
is  that  it  has  among  its  alumni,  one  Moses.  And  tradition 
has  it  that  he  also  was  a  professor  here.  He  doubtless  re- 
ceived all  the  learning  to  be  gotten  here,  but  was  careful  to 
get  his  religion  from  his  nurse  rather  than  his  priestly  pro- 
fessor. And  Moses  representing  learning  plus  God,  is  alive 
and  powerfully  influential  in  the  world  today,  while  Rah 
and  all  Rahisms,  great  as  they  were  in  some  respects,  minus 
Grod,  have  long  lain  dead  without  the  smallest  legacy  of  in- 
fluence and  all  but  forgotten. 

The  most  interesting  sight  in  Cairo,  if  we  except  the  Mus- 
eum, was  Al-Azhar,  the  great  Moslem  University.  It  is  in 
old  Cairo,  or  the  old  part  of  the  city,  and  is  equal  in  age 
to  the  city  itself,  dating  from  973,  A.  D.  Like  On,  Al-Azhar 
is  a  religious  institution  and  for  centuries  has  been  the 
leading  educational  center  not  only  of  EgjT^t,  but  of  the  Mo- 
hammedan world  with  its  many  millions  of  souls. 

29 


Its  first  building  was  naturally  a  mosque.  This  has  been 
added  to,  perhaps  a  score  of  times,  without  any  idea  of 
architectural  design,  and  with  the  purpose  only  to  make 
more  room.  These  many  and  diverse  apartments  serve  as 
dormitories,  the  students  from  each  country  or  nationality 
being  put  into  separate  quarters.  In  these  quarters  the 
students  live  and  study — they  sleep  without  beds,  sit  down 
without  chairs,  cook  without  stoves  and  eat  (at  least  those 
I  saw)  without  knives  and  forks.  Surrounded  by  these  dor- 
mitories is  a  wide  porch  and  an  open  court,  containing  an 
acre  or  more.  This  open  space,  I  suppose  one  would  call 
a  study  and  recitation  hall,  and  was  swarming  with  stu- 
dents. Take  an  old-time  school  with  fifty  boys  and  girls 
studying  aloud  (as  was  the  old  custom)  and  multiply  by 
one  hundred,  adding  a  few  extra  hundreds  to  make  up  for 
the  Arabic,  and  you  have  an  idea  of  what  we  saw  and  heard 
here.  The  young  and  old  were  here,  the  poor  and  the  rich, 
and  a  dozen  countries  were  represented.  Some  were 
reciting,  others  swaying  their  bodies  to  and  fro  were  study- 
ing, a  few  were  eating  their  lunch  of  a  crust  of  bread  and 
a  dried  fig,  here  and  there  would  be  a  fellow  asleep,  and 
others  were  watching  us  with  bulging  eyes.  A  number  of 
students  are  from  Cairo  and  have  families  and  businesses 
in  the  city,  and  come  to  the  university  at  spare  hours,  which 
in  the  East  are  very  many. 

The  Koran  is  the  chief  study,  with  Arabic,  logic,  rhetoric, 
geography,  etc.,  as  subsidiary  studies.  Teaching  these  lat- 
ter branches  is  little  more  than  a  pretense,  I  was  told;  cer- 
tainly in  the  accurate  use  of  language,  this  could  hardly  be 
called  a  school,  much  less  a  university.  It  is  worse  than 
mediaeval,  it  is  archaic,  antediluvian. 

It  is  the  center  of  Moslem  fanaticism  and  we  were  cau- 
tioned to  be  on  our  best  behavior  as  we  ^ infidel  dogs"  in- 
spected these  jabbering  so-called  students.  Fanaticism  im- 
plies superstition  and  ignorance — varmints  not  supposed  to 

30 


be  able  to  live  in  halls  of  learning — yet  here  side  by  side 
were  ignorance  and  'Uearaing/'  superstition  and  '' relig- 
ion/' 

A  three  to  six  years'  course  is  given,  the  graduates  being 
given  a  diploma  which  usually  secures  for  them  the  nui- 
versally  coveted  government  position. 

This  old  university — perhaps  the  oldest  in  the  world — has 
done  enough  harm,  to  have  been  retired  long-ago  on  a  liberal 
pension  of  perdition,  yet  it  is  still  doing  a  pretty  lively  bus- 
iness at  the  same  old  stand.  But  the  beginning  of  what 
many  hope  is  the  end  has  set  in.  A  few  years  ago  there 
were  over  twelve  thousand  students,  but  under  the  combined 
influence  of  Western  civilization,  England's  strong  hand  and 
Christian  missions,  the  number  has  decreased  several  thou- 
sand and  is  still  on  the  wane.  Its  a  long  ways  to  Egypt,  but 
it  would  be  well  worth  the  trip  if  one  could  but  have  the 
honor  of  being  best  man  at  the  funeral  of  senile  old  Al- 
Azhar  and  help  lay  him  under  the  clover  beside  his  unla- 
mented  predecessor,  the  University  of  On. 

Fourth  in  point  of  chronology,  but  third  in  the  ascending' 
scale  of  truth  is  the  National  Egyptian  University.  It  was 
organized  as  recently  as  December  1908,  and  as  its  name 
indicates,  is  fostered  by  the  government.  It  occupies  tem- 
porary quarters  in  an  old  palace,  and  with  its  blackboards, 
patent  desks  and  other  emblems  of  civilization,  contrasted 
strikingly  with  its  neighbor  and  rival  we  have  just  been 
speaking  of.  With  less  than  two  years  of  age,  this  new  in- 
stitution has  over  five  hundred  students.  It  is  modeled 
after  the  best  European  universities,  with,  of  course,  local 
adaptation.  Its  plan  is  not  to  be  on  speaking  terms  with 
religion,  avoiding  in  its  courses  and  life,  Moslemism  on  one 
hand  and  Christianity  on  the  other.  For  this  negative  re- 
ligious position,  the  friends  and  influence  of  Al-Azhar 
are  bitterly  opposing  it  and  even  predict  its  early  downfall. 
With  Christianity  ruled  out,  it  is  far  from  pleasing  to  the 
straight-out    Christian,   yet   they   recognize   the     power    o£ 

31 


truth,  and  hope  that  the  history,  science  and  philosophy  of 
the  Western  learning  taught  there  will  help  to  remove  the 
pall  of  superstition  and  to  break  up  the  despotism  of  fanat^ 
icism  that  now  enslaves  the  land.  Many  rocks  lie  ahead  of 
this  infant  institution.  Some  of  these  were  plainly  pointed 
out  by  ex-President  Roosevelt  in  his  speech  within  the  walls 
of  the  university  the  day  before  our  visit.  Despite  the  most 
serious  handicap — its  religiouslessness — we  can  hope  it  is 
destined  to  be  a  potent  factor  in  Egypt's  redemption  from 
darkness. 

The  fourth  university  is  that  of  the  American  Mission. 
It  is  not  in  the  full  sense  a  universitj^  though  it  comes 
nearer  it  than  any  of  the  three  preceding.  It  was  estab- 
lished by  the  United  Presbyterian  Church  of  *Hhe  States,'* 
and  along  uncompromising  Christian  lines  has  built  up  an 
institution  of  over  five  hundred  students,  and  of  most  com- 
manding influence.  The  collegiate  department,  which  is  up 
the  Nile  at  Assiut,  I  did  not  see,  though  the  primary  de- 
partment, Girls'  College  and  Theological  Seminary  in  Cairo 
I  visited   several  times. 

This  splendid  institution  does  the  kind  of  work  that  is 
done  in  Da\idson  College  and  the  College  for  Women  in 
Charlotte.  With  no  blowing  of  trumpets,  without  the  eclat 
and  magnitude  of  its  contemporaries,  toiling  quietly  and 
constantly,  it  has  been  and  is  a  mighty  leavening  power 
among  this  unleavened  people.  It  works  out  of  sight  from 
the  center  outward  as  all  orthodox  leaven  does.  And  in 
the  acknowledged  crisis  now  impending  in  Egypt,  under  Grod, 
this  Christian  college  will  be  a  powerful  ally  in  helping  to 
effect  the  triumph  of  truth. 

And  in  the  future  when  pagan  Al-Azhar  will  slumber  with 
heathen  On,  and  the  young  National  University  will  have 
repented  of  its  godlessness,  let  us  hope;  this  great  mission 
college,  planted  and  sustained  by  devoted  Christians  of  our 
own  great  nation,  will  continue  on  its  beneficent  way,  till  at 

32 


Photo  by  W.  R.  Minter,  1410 
REMAINS  OF  ON— Moses'  Alma  Mater. 


last  Egypt,  who  has  so  long  been  cursed  rather  than  blessed 
by  her  schools,  shall  come  to  learn  that  the  God  of  the  West 
has  builded  for  her  an  institution  which  has  reversed  the 
old  Egyptian  order,  and  instead  of  being  the  long-accus- 
tomed curse,  has  proven  a  vei*y  benediction  from  heaven. 


33 


MISSIONS  IN  EGYPT. 


The  brightest  spot  in  all  Egypt  is  the  mission  work  of 
the  United  Presbyterian  Church  of  the  United  States.  For 
three  days,  with  a  sigh  of  relief  and  a  heart  of  gratitude,  I 
turned  from  the  votaries  of  Isis  and  Apis,  and  even  Ma- 
homet, to  mingle  and  commune  with  the  disciples  of  Jesus. 
I  saw  only  the  mission  work  in  Cairo  and  not  all  of  that. 
But  what  I  saAv  in  this  part  of  this  great  work,  together 
with  what  I  saw  in  the  hearts  of  these  faithful  workers  and 
what  I  heard  at  their  lips  as  to  conditions  in  Egypt  is  far 
more  than  I  can  tell  in  this  article.  I  admit  frankly  a 
sj^mpathetic  bias  towards  this  enterprise  before  examina- 
tion, but  not  a  sympathy  that  would  blind  my  eyes  or  warp 
my   judgment. 

Let  me  introduce  the  reader  to  a  few  of  these  missionaries. 
First,  here  is  the  happiest  man  in  all  the  land  of  the  Nile, 
and  the  best  perhaps;  a  man  with  silver  hair  and  beard, 
glistening  eyes  and  beaming  face,  author,  preacher,  theologi- 
cal professor,  and  unofficial  head  of  the  whole  Egj^ptian  mis- 
sion— Rev.  Andrew  Watson,  D.D.,  for  forty-nine  years  a 
missionary  here.  Next  is  Miss  Ella  0.  Kyle,  head  of  the 
College  for  Girls,  and  who  is  giving  a  training  to  hundreds 
of  girls  similar  to  that  given  by  the  College  for  Women  in 
the  Standard's  home  city.  Miss  Kyle's  is  a  life  worth 
while.  Go  down  into  a  poorer  section  of  Cairo  (and  poorer 
means  filthier,  too),  back  into  a  side  street  and  turn  into  a 
narrow  alley,  and  here  is  a  frail  little  woman  past  sixty, 
alone  so  far  as  Americans  are  concerned,  and  in  tidily  kept 
quarters,  she,  with  her  native  helpers,  conducts  the  Fowler 
Orphanage  for  girls.  To  meet  her  and  see  her  work  did  me 
good.     I  want  you  to  know  her — Miss  Margaret  A.  Smith. 

34 


Take  time  for  one  more,  an  athletic  six-footer,  graduate  of 
Princeton  (collegiate  department)  and  Xenia,  0.,  Seminar^", 
virile  and  buoyant,  who,  with  his  cultured  young  wife,  adds 
enthusiasm  to  wisdom  in  the  station.  They  are  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  McClenahan.  There  are  eighty-four  more.  Let  these 
four  serve  as  samples. 

And  their  work?  Or  through  them  and  many  who  now 
sleep,  God's  work?  It  is  the  Synod  of  the  Nile.  It  consists 
of  the  Presbyteries  of  the  Delta,  Middle  Egypt,  Assiut  and 
Thebes,  with  eighty-eight  foreign  missionaries,  ninety-one 
native  preachers,  453  school  teachers,  80  colporteurs  and 
harum  workers,  70  organized  churches,  with  10,341  mem- 
bers. As  part  of  this  work,  the  average  Sunday  morning 
congregations  are  21,000;  Sunday  School  pupils,  16,440; 
boarding  and  day  school  pupils,  17,900  (including  Assiut 
College,  with  about  twice  as  many  students  as  Davidson), 
two  hospitals,  two  mission  boats,  and  $163,929  paid  last  year 
by  the  natives  for  church  and  school  work.  And  besides 
these  things,  all  those  finer,  subtler  blessings  of  the  gospel 
which  defy  tabulation  in  a  statistical  column.  The  figures 
above,  any  one  may  get  from  the  mission's  annual  report 
(published  in  Philadelphia),  but  they  mean  far  more  when 
you  have  visited  class-room  after  class-room,  heard  classes 
repeat  chapter  after  chapter  from  the  Bible,  and  others  tell 
Bible  stories  better  than  many  Presbyterian  boys  and  girls 
in  North  Carolina  can  do,  see  the  eagerness  and  neatness, 
and  over  it  all  the  promise  of  God  to  bless  and  save.  An- 
other thing  has  taught  me  more  than  the  figures  in  the 
printed  report  possibly  could,  alone — the  background  (I  might 
truthfully  say  the  black  ground)  of  Mohammedanism.  To 
paint  a  picture  one  must  have  a  background.  Against  the 
fierceness  and  the  darkness  of  the  false  prophet's  pagan- 
ism, the  light  of  the  gospel  shines  lustrously  bright  here. 
The  number  of  self-supporting  churches  and  others  nearly 
so,  was  a  surprise.  In  the  matter  of  teaching  the  native 
church  to  support  the  gospel,  these  Psalm-singers  are  giving 

35 


some  sound  Presbyterian  training.  In  fact,  the  work  in  the 
Sudan,  far  to  the  south,  and  which  is  really  foreign 
work,  is  being  done,  principally  by  native  preachers,  edu- 
cated in  the  college  at  Assiut  and  the  Theological  Seminary 
in  Cairo.  And  this  frontier  work  is  supported  in  part  by 
the  mission  churches  in  Egypt.  Still  another  thing  that 
heightened  my  admiration  for  the  work  of  these  patient 
toilers  is  the  difficulty  of  the  field.  No  mission  fields  are 
easy,  and  I  have  neither  the  desire  nor  the  right  to  say  that 
Mohammedan  Egypt  is  harder  than  other  fields,  yet  I  do 
say,  I  can  scarcely  imagine  how  any  field  could  be  more 
difficult. 

There  are  no  other  general  missionary  efforts  in  Egypt 
except  this  by  the  United  Presbyterians.  And  here  is  not 
only  a  striking  example  of  Christian  comity,  but  also  of  the 
application  of  the  soundest  business  principles.  The  Church 
of  England  is  doing  a  splendid  local  work  in  Cairo,  and  a 
few  other  points ;  and  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  have  a  small 
church  here.  And  I  believe  there  are  one  or  two  other  in- 
significant European  missions  here  also.  But  the  twelve 
million  souls  of  this  country  have  by  common  consent  been 
left  for  that  branch  of  the  great  Presbyterian  family  which 
is  so  bravely  wrestling  with  the  problem.  A  long  and  sad 
chapter  might  be  written  on  the  various  corrupt  forms  of 
so-called  Christianity  found  here — the  Roman  and  Greek, 
the  Armenian  and  Coptic  churches,  most  of  whom  have  not 
only  embittered  the  Moslem  against  Christianity  by  cor- 
ruption of  doctrine  and  practices,  but  themselves  have  need 
of  missionaries  being  sent  to  them.  All  of  which  adds  to 
the  complexity  and  difficulty  of  conquering  Egypt  for 
Christ.  One  Protestant  in  every  thousand  souls  may  seem 
slow  progress  for  51  years  of  preaching,  and  reason  for 
discouragement.  But  not  so.  It  is  a  magnificent  beginning, 
and  these  few  thousands  who  form  the  first  fruits  are  a 
demonstration  that  in  time  and  by  the  .Spirit   of  God  the 

36 


others,  too,  may  be  won.  And  over  and  above  all  consid- 
erations of  splendid  equipment,  judicious  methods  and 
faithful  missionaries,  to  effect  this  national  consummation, 
is  the  Word  of  God,  ''Egypt  shall  know  the  Lord,"  and 
the  wider  prophesy,  ''AH  nations  shall  serve  Him." 


37 


THREE   WEEKS   IN  PALESTINE. 


It  was  early  morning-,  April  the  fourth,  when  we  first  es- 
pied the  land  so  long  a  dream  but  so  soon  to  become  a  re- 
ality. Jaffa,  (Joppa  of  the  Bible),  perched  on  the  side  of 
the  hills  and  lining  the  shore  was  quaint  and  beautiful  in 
the  distance,  but  the  latter  part  of  this  impression  was  soou 
to  be  dissipated.  I  never  played  foot-ball  before  that  morn- 
ing but  we  had  a  fine  match  game  (our  baggage  and  our- 
selves being  the  ball).  Rival  boatmen  clambered  up  and 
swarmed  over  our  boat,  pushing,  screeching,  dragging  suit 
cases  and  bundles,  running  over  anything  or  anybody,  while 
we  looked  on  in  amazement,  pushed  and  all  but  fought.  We 
weye  mad  one  minute  and  in  the  next  would  be  forced  to 
laugh  at  the  ludicrousness  of  the  whole  performance.  But, 
to  mix  figures  a  little,  we  made  a  touch-down,  as  we  stepped 
ashore  with  necks  unbroken  and  baggage  unstolen. 

I  think  those  who  essay  to  read  the  few  letters  I  hope 
to  send  the  Standard,  would  like  a  little  introduction  to  our 
party.  There  are  thirty-four  of  them — fifteen  men  and 
nineteen  ladies.  Of  the  men,  five  are  ministers,  two  editors, 
three  youths,  with  a  banker,  a  broker,  a  lumber-dealer,  a  real 
estate  man  and  an  undertaker.  Of  the  ladies,  six  are  widows, 
five  are  wives  and  eight  single.  Among  the  ladies  are  two 
mission  workers  and  one  trained  nurse.  There  are  two  Metho- 
dists, five  Episcopalians,  five  Presbyterians  and  twenty-two 
Baptists,  which  rather  looks  like  watered  stock.  Two  of 
our  number  are  from  Massachusetts,  one  from  Illinois,  two 
each  from  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee,  one  each  from 
South  Carolina,  Florida  and  Missouri,  three  from  Alabama 
and  twenty-two  from  Georgia.  We  have  several  styles  of 
beauty,  every  kind  of  temperament  together  with  quite  an 

38 


assortment   of  tempers.     While   in   the  introducing  act,   let 
me  present  the  other  members  of  our  caravan,  humbler  may- 
be and  yet  very  important  personages.     Beside  our  conduc- 
tor    and      dragoman,     there      are     eight      carriage-drivers, 
nine  cooks  and  servants  and  twenty-one  muleteers;  and  de- 
serving of  honorable  mention,  twenty-four  carriage  horses, 
sixteen  riding  horses,  twelve  donkeys  and  forty  pack  mules. 
With   this   aggregation,  we  have  just   finished   a   delightful 
three  weeks'   camping  trip  through   a  large  part   of  Pales- 
tine.    Our  tents  were  usually  pitched  in  olive  groves  beside 
some     spring     or     stream   and  with   comfortable  cots,   and 
tempting   fare,   the   trip   was   well-nigh   ideal.     From   Jaffa 
we  went  by  train  through  the  beautiful  fertile  plain  of  Sha- 
ron up  the  rocky  Judean   mountains,   to  Jerusalem,   a   dis- 
tance of  fifty-seven  miles.    Here  our  tents  were  in  readiness 
for  us,  pitched  in  the  new  Jerusalem,  as  our  dragoman  ex- 
pressed it,   a  short  distance  north  of  the  old  city.     Under 
these  olive  trees  we  lived  for  ten   days  while  visiting  the 
many  spots  in  and  close  about  David's  ancient  city.     From 
here  we   had   a   hard   day's   journey   to   Hebron   and   back, 
twenty-two  miles  to  the  south,  and  a  still  more  interesting 
trip  down  to  Jericho,  the  Jordan  River  and  the  Dead  Sea, 
twenty-five  miles  to  the  east.     Only  one  point  of  the  com- 
pass remained  to  us,  so  breaking  camp,  we  turned  to  the 
north.     Passing  in  plain  view  of  Mizpeh,  Nob,  Bethel  and 
other  places  which  live  in  our  Bibles  we  pitched  our  tent 
just  outside  a  wretched  Moslem  village  in  a  beautiful  little 
valley.     This  town  like  all  the  other  native  \^llages  is  a  se- 
ries of  mud  huts,  all  built  together,  and  not  unlike  a  pros- 
perous dirtdauber  village  on  an  enlarged  scale.     Upon  our 
arrival  we  were  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes.     Scores  of     the 
more  timid  looked  at  us  from  the  flat  roofs  of  their  humble 
homes,  while  hundreds  swarmed  about  our  tents.     The  cus- 
tom is  for  camping  parties  to  put  themselves  under  the  pro- 
tection of  the  sheik  of  the  village,  who,  for  a  consideration, 

39 


of  course,  furnishes  guards  for  the  night.  These  supposed 
protectors  are  said  often  to  be  the  worst  kind  of  thieves, 
but  in  our  party  not  one  article  was  stolen  during  the  three 
weeks.  That  night  our  horses,  tied  to  the  ropes  for  lack 
of  a  tree  or  bush,  would  get  tangled  in  the  ropes  and  kick 
and  pitch  at  intervals,  the  asses  brayed  in  relays  all  night, 
and  it  seemed  that  a  hundred  lusty-lunged  dogs  in  the  near- 
by village  howled  back  a  response  in  Arabic,  And  some 
slept  some  and  others  slept  none.  But  all  soon  learned,  and 
these  sounds,  that  at  first  drove  away  sleep,  after  one  or 
twto  nights,  lulled  us  to  slumber.  Indeed  some  feared  they 
would  be  unable  to  go  to  sleep  after  camp-breaking  with- 
out our  canine  and  asinine  lullabies.  But  one  night  we  had 
our  revenge.  For  two  hours  or  more  with  songs,  and  such 
games  as  blindfold  and  ''Going  to  Jerusalem,"  accompanied 
by  many  shouts  and  much  laughter  we  made  so  much  racket 
that  the  villagers'  hearts  must  have  quaked,  and  they 
seemed  to  think  that  if  we  fought  like  iwe  hollowed  it  was 
prudent  to  lie  low  till  the  American  Beduoins  moved  on. 

But  to  resume:  Our  second  night  from  Jerusalem  w^as  just 
outside  the  prosperous  city  of  Nablus  (Shechem  of  Bible)  in 
the  narrow  valley  between  Mt.  Ebal  and  Mt.  Gerizim.  Here 
we  spent  Sunday  also,  which  was  a  day  of  physical  rest 
and  scriptural  delight.  Three  days'  journey  northwesterly, 
down  winding  valleys,  covered  with  wheat  and  walled  in  by 
mountains,  we  wound  our  way  past  the  disappearing  hills 
and  across  Sharon's  plain  of  herds  and  harvests  till  we 
reached  the  southwestern  slope  of  Mt.  Carmel,  on  the  Med- 
iterranean Sea.  Here  is  Haifa,  a  busy,  half -native  and  half- 
German  seaport  of  25,000  people.  Our  tents  were  pitched 
in  a  vacant  lot  of  the  city,  very  much  after  the  fashion  of 
a  circus  in  North  Carolina.  We  were  back  on  the  seashore 
forty  miles  niorth  of  where  we  landed  at  Jaffa.  Now  turn- 
ing east  or  northeast  a  good  day's  drive  took  us  througli 
the  Plain  of  Acre  north  of  Carmel 's  long  high  backbone,  out 
of  Samaria,  up.  up  the  hills  and  mountains  of  Gallilee  to 

40 


Nazaretb.  The  view  here,  the  holy  sites  and  the  missions, 
I  shall  speak  lof  later.  I  wish  only  to  give  now  our  route, 
and  any  introductoiy  fragments  that  may  get  in  the  way. 
From  Nazareth  it  rained  on  us  to  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  where 
on  April  22nd  our  last  camp  was  pitched.  Some  of  us 
braved  the  drizzling  rain  for  a  row  over  these  waters  that 
heard  so  much  of  our  Saviour's  teaching,  saw  so  much  of 
His  wiorks  and  learned  more  than  once  the  superiority  of 
His  strange  power. 

All  were  astir  at  5:00  o'clock  the  next  morning,  and  after 
good-byes  to  our  always  courteous  and  efficient  camp-serv- 
ants we  embarked  in  small  boats  to  cross  the  sea  and  take 
the  train  at  the  extreme  end  of  the  lake.  Camp  life  had 
been  thoroughly  enjoyed,  but  we  were  ready  for  a  change, 
and  with  a  last  look  at  blue  Galilee  and  the  mountains  of 
Canaan  to  the  w^est  we  welcomed  the  sight  of  a  sure-enough 
train  clipping  across  the  Jordan  valley  towards  us.  A  wild 
climb  up  the  mountains  of  Gilead,  lunch  on  the  wide  ex- 
tended plain  of  Hauran  and  a  good  dinner  in  our  comfort- 
able hotel  on  the  banks  of  the  Abana  in  Damascus,  city  of 
lousy  dogs  and  ancient  years,  brought  to  a  close  a  full  day. 
We  are  now  out  of  Palestine,  though  I  hope  in  the  few  fol- 
lowing letters  to  go  again  with  as  many  as  desire,  over  this 
wonderful  land  of  Israel. 


41 


PALESTINE  OF  TODAY. 


The  undue  haste  at  modernization  of  which  I  had  read,  I 
failed  to  find.  Change  there  is,  but  two  railways,  a  few 
miles  in  leng-th,  a  spendidly  built  macadam  road  in  several 
directions  out  of  Jerusalem,  and  a  few  other  signs  of  the 
20th  century,  have  failed  to  hustle  the  East.  Much  less  are 
the  natural  aspects  changing.  Above  all  ^others,  the  fact 
that  most  impressed  me  in  nature  was  the  treelessness  of 
the  land.  Excepting  fruit  trees,  a  few  scrubby  oaks  on  the 
slopes  of  Mt.  Carmel  and  adjacent  hills,  and  a  few  lonesome 
cypress  and  sycamore  tree,  I  did  not  see  any  trees  in  all 
the  land.  This,  however  beautiful  the  landscape,  gives  mo- 
notony, at  least  to  one  accustomed  to  the  alternating  fields 
and  forests  'of  North  Carolina.  Next  to  the  absence  of  for- 
ests is  the  presence  of  rocks.  Rocks,  rocks,  everywhere ! 
According  to  the  story  of  my  childhood,  here  certainly  is 
where  the  devil's  apron-strings  broke  and  he  spilled  his 
rocks.  Houses  are  of  stone,  and  so  are  fences  and  bridges 
and  terraces.  The  hills  and  mountains,  denuded  of  trees 
have  by  the  rain  of  centuries  also  been  robbed  of  most  of 
their  soil,  so  that  millions  of  boulders  and  acres  of  rocks, 
great  and  small,  frown  at  you  as  you  pass.  A  little  rem- 
nant of  soil  remains,  packed  into  crevices  or  hiding  behind 
a  friendly  stone  and  protected  by  an  army  of  flowers  ar- 
rayed against  the  flood  in  defence  of  its  meagre  measure  of 
earth.  I  have  counted  a  score  of  rock  terraces,  each  from 
three  to  ten  feet  high,  up  a  single  mountain  side,  marking 
where  in  the  days  of  Israel's  glory  were  fruitful  vineyards 
and  contented  homes,  but  now  a  desolation  whose  broken 
walls  write  plainly  against  the  mountain  side — Ichabod. 

Speaking  only  of  the  natural  world,  the  next  most  strik- 

42 


inff  thmo;  is  flowers.  I  didn't  know  there  were  so  manv 
flowers  in  the  world;  many  in  kind  and  very,  very,  many  m 
number;  mountains  of  flowers,  valleys  and  plains  of  flow- 
ers; flowers  everywhere  in  tangled  masses,  except  the  flelds 
of  grain,  and  even  here  in  lesser  numbers  they  smiled  at 
.  us  from  the  ripening  wheat.  The  white  and  pink  Roses  of 
Sharon,  the  lilies  of  the  fleld,  and  of  the  valley,  with  the 
red,  white  and  pink  clover,  the  scarlet  poppy,  white  and 
yellow  daisies,  anemonies,  oleanders,  and  even  the  thistle, 
with  its  blossom  of  blue,  and  a  host  of  others,  make  this  the 
paradise  of  wild  flowers. 

Accustomed  to  our  streams  and  springs  and  wells  in  tho 
homeland,  the  scarcity  and  therefore  the  value  of  water  in 
this   land   much   impressed  me.     Streams   that  flow   all  the 
year  are  few,  while  rocky  beds  where  only  winter  torrents 
rush    are   numerous.      The    scarcity    of    springs    makes    the 
crowds  about  them,  both  of  men  and  beasts,  the  larger,  and 
with  no  sense  of  safeguarding  the  water,  the  danger  of  con- 
tamination  is   great.     For  instance,   a  village   of  hundreds., 
with  thousands  of  sheep  and  goats,  usually  has  not  more 
than  one  well  or  fountain.     An  hour  or  more  before  lunch 
one   day,   we  passed   several   mothers   standing  in   a   creek, 
giving   their   little   naked   children   a   good   scrubbing.      We 
drank  at  lunch  a  few  miles  further  down  out  of  that  stream, 
and  probably  the  bath  water  of  those  little  rascals  we  saw 
up  the  creek.    You  say  you  wouldn't  have  drunk  it,  but  you 
don 't  know.     Scarce  as  water  is,  though,  in  comparison  with 
countries  contiguous,  such  as  thirsty  Egypt,  lined  on  both 
sides  with  deserts,  or  Arabia  or  Persia,  with  their  water- 
less wastes,  this  land  is  abundantly  supplied  with  water.^  Yet 
compared  with  North   Carolina,   this  is   a   dry   and  thirsty 
land.    At  any  rate,  Isaiah's  invitation,  ''Ho,  every  one  that 
thirsteth,"   and   the   Saviour's   presentation    of   Himself    to 
the  woman  of  Samaria  as  the  ''Water  of  Life,"  have  in  the 
light  of  the  local  coloring,  a  fresh  and  vivid  meaning. 
Every  traveller  here  no  doubt  compares  the  real  Palestine 

43 


before  his  eyes  with  the  land  as  pictured  from  his  readings. 
And  perhaps  all  have  in  the  presence  of  the  actual  to  amend 
the  picture  they  had  imagined.  I  know  I  did.  The  Plains 
of  Sharon  and  Jezreel  are  both  far  more  fertile  and  more 
beautiful  than  I  had  thought;  there  are  more  and  higher 
mountains  with  scenery  more  rugged  and  grand  than  I  had 
fancied.  If  disappointed  in  some  detail,  my  heart  instead  of 
being  disillusioned  by  the  proximity  of  view,  has  rather 
been  amazed  at  the  wonders,  beauties  and  revelations  of  the 
fand,  despite  the  degree  to  which  it  is  in  ruins  and  to  which 
sinful  man  still  rudely  interrupts  the  vision. 

The  climate  during  April  was  very  much  like  the  climate 
of  Asheville  in  that  month.  Winter  clothes  had  been  com- 
fortable and  overcoats  in  constant  use,  save  in  the  middle  of 
the  day.  In  view  from  the  high  points  of  nearly  all  Pales- 
tine, is  snow-crowned  Hermon,  while  at  Jericho  and  Jaffa, 
Haifa  and  elsewhere,  were  oranges,  bananas  and  lemons 
growing  in  luxuriance.  Between  these  frigid  and  tropical 
extremes  is  possible  every  zone  of  vegetation.  Small,  there- 
fore, as  it  is,  this  land  in  its  vegetation  zones  is  world-wide. 

Wheat  and  olives  seem  the  two  most  valuable  crops. 
Clover,  figs  and  grapes  come  next  in  importance,  I  should 
judge,  and  after  these,  oranges,  vegetables  and  almonds. 

But  as  in  the  time  of  Abraham,  so  now,  this  is  a  pastoral 
country.  Its  chief  wealth  today  is  its  flocks  and  herds.  We 
have  seen  hundreds  of  shepherds  leading  and  watching  their 
flocks,  calling  to  them,  carrying  the  sick  and  lame,  and  clos- 
ing them  in  the  fold  at  night.  In  addition  to  sheep  and 
goats  are  cattle  and  donkeys  and  camels  in  profusion,  horses 
in  fewer  numbers,  but  not  so  much  as  one  shoat  in  all  the 
landscape.  It  wouldn't  have  been  healthy  for  him  if  he  had 
been,  for,  for  over  a  month  we  had  eaten  mutton,  mutton, 
and  things  fried  in  olive  oil,  till  we  could  hardly  stand  to 
talk  about  unprocurable  ham  or  bacon,  or  good  old  North 
Carolina  lard-shortening. 

As  carriages  are  yet  new  institutions  in  this  country,  roads 

44 


are  new.  The  old  roads  being  bridle  paths  over  the  moun- 
tains and  down  the  valleys  and  for  our  -wagons  and  box  cars 
sufficed  the  backs  of  the  donkeys  and  camels  respectively. 
Even  with  some  splendid  roads,  wagons  are  rarely  seen. 
What's  the  use  of  buying  a  wagon  and  harness  in  addition 
to  the  donkey  so  long  as  the  donkey  has  a  ready-for-use 
back,  they  would  argue?  And  as  a  clincher,  they  would 
add,  ''Besides,  our  fathers  had  no  wagons.''  We  are  dis- 
posed to  smile  at  their  slowness,  yet  we  may  smile  too  soon. 
May  not  their  way  be  best  and  cheapest  for  them?  Donkeys 
and  camels  are  cheap  and  can  carry  incredible  loads.  iSo 
they  are  loaded  up,  and  in  case  of  the  donkeys,  one  man 
walks  and  drives  a  small  drove  of  them,  laden  with  mer- 
chandise. In  case  of  the  camels,  when  laden,  they  are  lined 
up  tandem,  coupled  together  with  a  rope,  almost  freight- 
train  style,  and  with  one  man  as  engineer,  conductor  and 
flagman,  the  camel  train  moves  out.  So  there  you  are.  1 
repeat,  we  musn't  laugh  at  these  people  too  soon. 

From  Jerusalem  to  Nablus,  a  road  superior  in  some  re- 
spects to  any  thing  even  in  boastful  Mecklenburg  county, 
has  been  built  in  the  last  few  years.  The  method  of  its 
construction  was  truly  oriental.  No  speeches  or  election 
bonds  or  other  civilized  foolishness;  the  Sultan  just  decided 
it  would  be  nice  to  have  such  a  road,  so  he  sent  an  engineer 
to  make  the  survey,  and  then  ordered  the  people  along  the 
way  to  build  it.  And  they  did,  without  one  cent  of  cost  to 
the  government.  This  incident  is  typical  of  Turkey's  benefi- 
cent rule  in  this  country!  Take  another:  Taxes  are  collect- 
ed today  vei-y  much  as  Matthew  and  his  fellow  publicans 
did  in  the  time  of  our  Saviour.  The  Constantinople  authori- 
ties, as  I  have  been  informed,  and  I  think  reliably,  will  send 
each  year  to  the  G^overnor  of  Jerusalem,  ''Your  district 
must  pay  so  much  this  year."  He  has  to  raise  and  forward 
that  and  all  the  rest  he  keeps.  The  village  sheik  is  assessed 
by  the  Governor  so  much.  This  he  must  collect  in  ways  as 
seems  best  to  him;  all  over  the  stipulated  amount  being  his 

45 


pay  for  his  trouble.  This,  so  long  as  human  nature  is  the 
grand  rascal  it  is,  is  not  exactly  an  ideal  system  of  taxation. 

Yet  these  are  the  same  people  who  still  so  carefully  ob- 
serve the  old  Mosaic  injunction,  '*  Cursed  be  he  that  re- 
moveth  his  neighbor's  land  mark,*'  that  they  have  no  deeds 
to  their  lands  and  rarely  or  never  have  a  dispute  as  to  own- 
ership or  boundarj^  lines!  The  new  constitutional  govern- 
ment provides  for  land  deeds  to  be  taken  out,  though  but 
few  in  Palestine  have  yet  availed  themselves  of  this  privi' 
lege. 

Turkey's  government  has  long  been  a  plague-spot  in  point 
of  law  and  justice.  Life  and  property  are  very  insecure. 
The  window  beside  which  I  am  writing  these  words  has  a 
net  work  of  iron  bars  as  secure  as  the  jail  in  Lincolnton. 
Yet  I  am  not  in  jai,  but  in  my  comforable  room  of  my 
Damascus  hotel.  Many  or  most  dwellings  all  over  Palestine, 
except  the  native  huts,  have  barred  windows.  Every  shep- 
herd or  donkey  and  camel  driver  in  charge  of  merchandise 
is  armed  with  shot  guns,  rifles,  pistols,  dirks  or  long  handled 
hatches,  and  often  with  several  of  the  aforesaid.  These 
are  the  visible  implements  of  war;  how  many  disappearing 
batteries  they  may  have  under  their  long  outer  garments,  I 
had  no  curiosity  to  investigate. 

In  line  with  these  travelling  arsenals,  is  the  fact  that  I 
didn't  see  a  farm  house  or  cottage  in  all  Palestine  out  by 
itself,  such,  for  instance,  as  dots  every  landscape  in  our 
happy  land.  The  reason  given  me  is  that  they  are  afraid. 
They  live  huddled  up  by  hundreds  in  these  villages  of 
solid  dwellings,  with  only  a  few  narrow,  crooked  alleys 
through  them,  for  mutual  protection.  Perhaps  the  thought 
of  a  happy  little  home  apart  from  all  their  neighbors  has 
never  occurred  to  them.  But  if  they  escape  the  marauding 
Bedouin,  they  do  not  escape  the  fleas  and  tuberculosis,  as 
the  chickens,  donkeys  and  people  occupy  in  many  instances 
the  same  bed  chamber.  I  inspected  one  such  home,  being  at- 
tracted by  seeing  the  chickens  going  in   the   hut  to   roost, 

46 


though  before  the  iuspection  was  completed,  the  lady  of  the 
house  drove  us  out  with  quite  an  assortment  of  fiei^y  Arabic 
faces,    gestures    and    anathemas. 

But  speaking  lof  diseases,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  such 
luxuries  as  grip,  appendicitis,  pellagra,  etc.,  are  unknown, 
and  among  the  Beduoins,  who  live  in  tents,  consumption  is 
practically  unknown.  Malarial  and  typhoid  fever,  diar- 
rhoea and  rheumatism  are  the  most  prevalent  diseases.  To  this 
should  be  added  sore  eyes,  producing  very  often  blindness  and 
caused  by  a  combination  of  unprotected  glare  of  the  sun, 
together  with  too  great  economy  in  the  use  of  soap.  We 
saw  a  few  lepers,  but  the  number  affected  by  this  disease 
is  comparatively  small. 

Drinking  intoxicating  liquors  is  a  negligible  quantity, 
thanks  to  the  positive  prohibition  of  the  Koran.  But  every 
man  is  an  inveterate  smoker  of  the  cigarette. 

But  my  time  and  your  patience  are  already  overtaxed. 
What  shall  we  say  to  all  these  things  ?  Did  not  G^od  threaten 
with  a  curse  not  only  the  children  of  Israel,  but  also  their 
land?  Israel  sinned  in  rejecting  the  law  through  their 
blind  corruptions  and  wilful  disobedience,  and  then  in  re- 
jecting the  Fulfiller  of  the  law.  And  no  one  needs  to  be  told 
how  terribly  the  threatened  curse  has  fallen  on  them.  But 
the  land?  Archaeologists  dig  up  and  read  the  inscriptions 
of  the  ancients  and  so  bring  to  light  facts  important  and 
tragic.  God's  hieroglyphics  are  written  all  over  this  un- 
happy land.  Jericho,  Jerusalem,  Capernaum,  with  their 
ruins,  the  broken  terraces  on  a  thousand  hills,  the  wasted 
sites  of  former  plenty,  spell  out,  it  seems  to  me,  the  fulfill- 
ment of  God's  curse.  In  letters  bold  and  awful,  God's 
handwriting  is  over  this  once  goodly  land,  and  the  interpre- 
tation is,  ^'I,  Jehovah,  spake  the  blessings  and  the  curses 
from  Gerizim  and  Ebal — and  I  meant  it." 

But  with  our  God  is  compassion.  Should  not  we  more 
earnestly  pray  than  perhaps  we  have,  that  God  would  turn 

47 


unto  Him  that  wandering  people  whose  fathers  wrote  for 
us  our  Bible,  and  that  He  would  overthrow  the  false  prophet 
of  this  land,  and  sin,  and  bring  under  His  benign  sway 
Canaan  and  its  Christless  people,  and  make  to  smile  a  land 
long  used  to  tears,  restore  true  worship  and  service  of  Him 
on  these  hills  and  hasten  the  coming  of  that  Holy  One  who 
came  once  before,  and  who  Glomes  but  once  again;  but  for 
that  once,  thank  God! 


48 


JERUSALEM  OF  1910. 


All  tourists  to  Palestine  go  for  the  sake  of  the  past,  yet 
they  cannot  shut  their  eyes  to  the  present.  Indeed,  there  is 
at  least  one  sense  in  which  Jerusalem  of  today  is  more  in- 
teresting than  the  Jerusalem  of  Solomon,  and  in  this  same 
sense  *one  of  the  thousand  living  sore-eyed  urchins  on  its 
streets  exceeds  in  interest  some  dead  prophet  in  his  tomb. 
For  the  present  let  us  look  at  this  ancient  city  in  its  mod- 
ern garb  and  at  a  later  time  we  shall  visit  the  holy  places. 

The  Jerusalem  we  saw  is  a  lineal  descendant  of  the  City 
of  David — or  to  go  further  back,  of  Oman's  threshing  floor 
— from  either  of  which  it  is  removed  eight  municipal  gen- 
erations. These  eight  forefathers  (for  that  many  times  the 
city  has  been  destroyed  and  buried)  are  entombed  one  upon 
another  and  on  their  sepulchers  lives  the  rather  unworthy 
scion  of  this  royal  line. 

Jerusalem  is  the  terminus  of  a  short  railway  to  Jaffa  on 
the  coast.  This  little  road  would  be  accounted  in  America 
very  poor  transportation  facilities  for  a  city  of  100,000;  yet 
it  must  be  a  vast  advance  over  none  at  all,  and  is  certainly 
a  boon  to  travelers.  The  station  is  a  mile  southwest  of  the 
city  proper,  though  around  the  station  is  a  large  and  flour- 
ishing settlement  of  Germans.  The  number  of  hacks  at  the 
station  and  their  solicitation  of  your  patronage  was  thor- 
oughly up-to-date.  So  also  was  the  splendid  road  with  its 
bridge  of  enduring  masonry  over  which  we  passed  to  the 
city. 

There  are  really  two  Jerusalems;  one  the  densely  popu- 
lated area  within  the  old  walls  where  the  Jews  largely  pre- 
dominate, the  other  outside  these  walls,  where  to  the  west 
and  north  is  a  growing  city  of  modern  houses  and  streets. 

49 


Here  are  the  hotels,  the  European  shops,  the  homes  of  va- 
rious national  and  religious  colonies,  dotted  here  and  there 
with  churches,  schools  and  hospitals. 

The  wall  separating  the  old  from  the  new  Jerusalem  is  in- 
tact, and  while  all  but  the  foundations  were  built  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  it  must  give  a  fair  idea  of  just  how  this 
walled  in  citj-  looked  in  the  time  of  Christ  and  even  of  Solo- 
mon. The  height  of  this  wall  varies  from  thirty  to  seventy 
feet,  and  it  is  from  ten  to  fifteen  feet  thick,  while  at  in. 
tervals  stand  sentinal  towers.  On  all  four  sides  of  the 
city  are  gates,  six  of  which  are  open  and  five  closed.  The 
streets  are  not  golden,  but  of  the  earth — very  earthy — 
crooked,  narrow,  dark  and  filthy.  David  street,  the  prin- 
cipal business  thoroughfare,  is  from  ten  to  fourteen  feet 
wide,  and,  like  many  others,  covered  over  much  of  the  way, 
and  so  really  an  arcade.  It  ascends  Mt.  Zion  and  much  of 
the  way  is  a  long  series  of  steps.  These  steps  exclude  all 
vehicles,  though  the  donkey  and  camel  with  their  large  packs 
keep  you  dodging  out  of  their  way.  The  great  majority  of 
the  streets  of  Jerusalem,  because  of  narrowness,  crooked- 
ness, or  steepness,  or  all  of  these  combined,  never  see  buggy 
or  wagon.  On  those  that  are  used  by  carriages,  they  can 
pass  each  other  only  at  certain  wide  places  or  at  crossings. 
Tourists'  carriages  were  the  only  vehicles  I  recall  seeing 
within  these  walls.  And  sidewalks!  Usually  sidewalk, 
gutter  and  street  are  one.  A  very  few  streets  had  what  we 
understand  as  a  sidewalk,  varying  in  width  from  one  inch 
up  to  four  or  five  feet,  then  disappearing  for  a  block,  only 
to  appear  further  on  at  any  angle  and  uncertain  width. 

The  people  who  daily  walk  these  devious  ways  to  their 
humble  tasks  are  52,000  Jews,  30,000  Mohammedans,  and 
20,000  Christians  of  various  sects.  The  different  religion- 
ists occupy,  generally  speaking,  different  sections  of  the 
city.  The  Southwest  Ward,  to  use  a  familiar  term,  is  the 
Armenian   quarter;    the   Northwest,      centering     about     the 

50 


Church  of  Holj^  Sepulcher,  the  quarters  of  the  Latins  and 
Greeks,  while  the  Moslems  live  in  the  Northeast,  with  the 
Jews  in  the  Southeast  Ward. 

The  population  in  the  modem  city  without  these  fortress- 
like walls  is  a  conglomerate  of  races  and  religions,  though 
the  Russions  and  Germans  seem  to  predominate.  Religiously 
speaking,  here  the  Greek  Catholics  are  most  numerous,  while 
from  a  financial  classification,  the  well-to-do,  as  opposed  to 
the  poor  in  the  congested  old  city,  have  their  homes  in  this 
section.  Still  again  the  modem,  twentieth  century  man 
lives  here  as  opposed  to  the  native  mediaeval  man  behind 
the  walls. 

When  to  these  different  peoples  you  add  an  even  greater 
variety  of  "pilgrims,"  both  Moslem  and  Christian,  from 
all  over  the  world,  you  have  a  medley  of  races,  religions, 
languages,  costumes  and  colors,  that  can  be  matched  per- 
haps nowhere  else  in  the  world.  At  all  the  "holy  places"  and 
up  and  down  Damascus  and  David  streets,  these  curious 
peoples  jostle  each  other.  Speaking  of  these  two  streets  re- 
minds me  of  the  shops  or  stores.  They  are  dark,  dirty  and 
small,  averaging,  I  would  say,  from  one-half  to  two-thirds 
the  size  of  a  North  Carolina  sitting  room.  The  shoe  shop 
keepers  make  shoes  while  the  customer  is  coming;  the  ba- 
ker sells  his  bread  and  other  uninviting  edibles  hot  from 
the  charcoal  fire.  You  don't  go  in,  because  you  can't  get  in 
easily;  that  is  unless  the  proprietor  comes  out  to  make  room. 
Besides  there  is  no  use,  as  by  stepping  to  the  door  you  are  in 
sight  and  almost  in  reach  of  any  article  for  sale.  The  sight 
of  an  American  department  store  would  give  these  mer- 
chants the  blind  staggers. 

This  glimpse  at  the  native  business  life  of  these  people 
will  convince  one  that  they  do  not  belong  to  our  century 
nor  to  the  over-commercialized  west.  There  is  no  doubt 
about  things  being  hand  made  here.  Not  only  is  there  the 
fewest  possible  tools  in  use,  but  the  motive  power  is  neither 
electric,  steam  nor  horse,  but  crude  human  brawn.     I  no- 

51 


ticed,  for  instance,  a  man  making  some  beautiful  bannis- 
ters. With  one  hand,  by  a  simple  yet  ingenious  device, 
similar  to  a  violin  bow,  he  turned  very  rapidly  the  piece  of 
wood,  the  other  hand  held  one  end  of  the  chisel,  while  his 
toes  gripped  the  lower  end  of  the  chisel  and  held  it  true 
to  the  wood.  And  the  w^ork  was  both  neat  and  expeditious, 
and  the  humble  workman  was  all  unconscious  that  he  was 
doing  what  probably  no  fellow-craftsman  in  America  could 
do.  And  so  long  as  men  are  cheaper  than  machines,  this 
primitive  condition  is  likely  to  continue,  not  only  in  Jeru- 
salem, but  in  many  other  places  in  the  East. 

But  Jerusalem  is  as  interesting  from  a  civic  standpoint 
as  from  an  industrial.  It  has  a  few  lonely  street  lamps,  no 
telephones,  no  water  or  sewerage  beyond  what  Solomon  had. 
It  may  not  be  nearly  so  good.  But  what  it  lacks  in  this  line, 
it  makes  up  in  post  offices.  It  boasts  of  five — Turkish, 
French,  German,,  Austrian  and  Italian,  each  being  con- 
ducted and  owned  by  the  nation  indicated  in  the  name.  In 
the  days  when  there  was  only  a  Turkish  post  office,  the  en- 
terprising postal  clerks  would  soak  the  stamps  off  the  let- 
ter, destroy  the  latter  and  sell  again  the  former  the  next 
day  to  another  man  for  another  letter,  and  so  on  till  he 
would  tire  of  the  soaking  business.  France,  Austria,  Ger- 
many and  Italy  didn't  like  such  postal  practices,  so  they 
demanded  the  right  to  establish  post  offices  of  their  own. 
And  not  only  at  Jerusalem,  but  at  Jaffa,  Beirut  and  else- 
where, this  strange  condition  exists. 

Jerusalem  is  rich  in  Sundays,  too.  The  Moslems  observe 
Friday,  the  Jews  Saturday,  the  Christians  iSunday.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  Jew  easily  leads  the  other  two  sects  in 
observing  the  day,  at  least  in  point  of  outward  form.  In 
the  shuffle  between  these  rival  days  of  rest  and  worship, 
very,  very  many  (among  whom  are  not  a  few  tourists  from 
Christian  lands)  compromise  the  matter  (and  themselves, 
too)   by  observing  none. 

When   it   comes   to   mission   schools   and   other   forms   of 

52 


philanthropy,  few  cities  of  its  size  can  surpass  it.  The 
Greeks,  Latins,  Lutherans,  Church  of  England,  as  well  as 
philanthropic  Jews,  have  a  generous  share  in  works  of  this 
character.  These  schools  have  also  stirred  the  usually  in- 
different Turkish  authorities  to  establish  government  schools 
for  both  girls  and  boys.  For  the  lack  of  competent  native 
teachers,  the  instruction  in  these  schools  is  given  largely  by 
European  teachers.  The  need  of  these  schools,  both  mission 
and  state,  will  be  better  realized  when  we  know  that  this 
city  of  100,000  people  has  only  one  newspaper,  that  an 
Arabic  weekly,  consisting  of  two  pages  about  the  size  of 
those  of  the  Presbyterian  Standard,  printed  on  one  side 
only. 

And  that  reminds  me  of  the  languages  here.  Every  Eu- 
ropean language  may  be  heard  any  day  in  the  course  of  an 
hour's  stroll  about  the  streets.  The  native  tongue — Arabic 
— comes  first,  of  course.  Then  comes  Turkish,  French  and 
English  in  importance.  In  Egj^t,  English,  as  a  language, 
has  outstripped  French  and  is  very  close  behind  it  in  Pales- 
tine. Here,  as  doubtless  it  is  in  all  Europe,  no  one  can  get 
along  successfully  with  only  one  language.  I  was  informed 
that  the  telephone  girls  in  Cairo  had  to  speak  four  lan- 
guages, and  most  of  our  carriage  drivers  in  Jerusalem,  be- 
sides Arabic,  could  make  a  pretty  good  pass  at  English, 
French  and  German.  It  was  surprising  and  interesting  to 
see  how  much  they,  the  souvenir  venders  and  others,  could 
express  with  a  vocabulary  of  from  thirty  to  fifty  English 
words. 

But  French  money  is  better  understood  and  more  popular 
than  the  French  language.  Most  tourists  use  it  rather  than 
the  less  simple  English  or  the  more  unintelligible  Turkish 
currency. 

In  fine,  the  Jerusalem  we  saw  was  interesting  as  an  an- 
tique, and  because  it  is  so  truly  oriental  and  therefore  so 
thoroughly  different  from  the  cities  of  the  West.  Yet  it 
was  sad  to  see  this  patriarch  among  cities,  which  even  after 

53 


all  her  tragic  history,  seems  not  yet  to  have  learned  what 
are  the  unfailing  wages  of  sin.  But  it  was  hopeful  and  com- 
forting to  find  signs  of  a  better  day.  Human  agencies  are 
at  work  which  cannot  fail  of  blessing,  indeed,  which  are 
blessing  now,  but  more  than  this,  God's  promise  which 
standeth  sure  and  steadfast,  that  the  age-long  conflict  be- 
tween sin  and  holiness  has  no  uncertain  issue.  The  star  of 
hope  that  will  lead  out  of  its  sorrowful  plight  this  sinning 
city  is  God  Jehovah,  the  Lord  of  might.  Nothing  short  of 
God  can  paint  rosy,  Jerusalem's  tomorrow. 


54 


HOLY  PLACES  IN  PALESTINE. 


Palestine  as  a  whole  has  been  hallowed  by  the  words  and 
works  of  patriarchs  and  prophets,  of  apostles  and  by  that 
One  .who   called   and  commissioned   them.     Then  there   are 
many  local   spots   which   are   distinguished  because  this   or 
that  incident  of  scripture  took  place  there.     The  effort  to 
locate     too     many     such  places  has,  as  one  would  expect, 
brought   about   much   difference  of   opinion.     The   spirit   of 
long  ago,   as  voiced  by  the  woman  of   Samaria,  when   she 
said  to  Christ,  ''Our  fathers  worshipped  in  this  mountam; 
and  ye  say,  that  in  Jerusalem  is  the  place  where  men  ought 
to  worship,"  is  still  alive.    For  all  over  Palestine  are  rival 
chapels  and  churches,  each  claiming  to  be  the  exact  spot  of 
some  scriptural  incident.     For  instance,   the  Romans   have 
their  Garden  of  Gethsemane  walled  in  and  in  the  midst  of 
the  garden  a  beautiful  gilt-doomed  chapel;  while  hard  by, 
also  walled  in,  is   to  the  Greeks,  where   our  Saviour  bore 
alone     the     agony.     In  Oana,  both  the  above  bodies  have 
churches  that  mark  the  exact  spot  where  that  simple  mar- 
riage that  had  Jesus  as  a  guest,  took  place.     In  Nazareth 
we  were  shown  a  church  the  Greek     Catholics     have  built 
where  Joseph  and  Mary,  with  their  wonderful  child,  lived. 
Nearly  half  a  mile  distant  is  a  Roman  Catholic  church  and 
monastery,  which  cover,  themselves  being  witness,  the  boy- 
hood home  of  Jesus,  while  deep   down  in  the  rock  is  the 
kitchen  of  Mary,  and  a  stone's  throw  distant,  the  site  of 
Joseph's   workshop!     At   places  that   admit   of  no   rivalry, 
usually  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  churches  have  pre- 
empted them  and  marked  them  with  a  chapel,  monastery  or 
hospice  for  pilgrims.     In  this  way,  Bethany,  the  Mount  o5 


t)0 


Olives,  Jacob's  Well  and  other  places  are  owned  by  the 
Greek  chui'ch,  while  Capernaum,  Mt.  Carmel  and  other 
places  are  in  the  Romans'  hands. 

Again  some  places  are  owned  jointly  by  both  these  sects, 
while  wall  to  wall  stand  their  rival  chapels.  In  a  series  of 
rock  caves  in  Bethlehem  is  the  place  generally  accepted  as 
being  the  place  where  Jesus  was  bom.  From  this  grotto, 
are  two  stairways  of  stone,  the  one  to  the  south  leading 
into  the  Greek  church,  with  all  its  accessory  quarters,  while 
the  steps  leading  to  the  north  bring  you  into  the  church  of 
her  ecclesiastical  rival — the  Roman.  In  the  dark,  narrow 
hallway,  within  ten  feet  of  the  manger  stands  an  armed 
infidel  soldier  of  Turkey  to  keep  the  followers  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace  from  fighting  each  other!  But  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre  in  Jerusalem  is  the  head  of  all  such  affront- 
ing. It  covers  the  traditional  site  of  Christ's  crucifixion 
and  burial,  and  is  accepted  as  such  by  all  Christian  sects 
except  Protestants.  The  majority  of  Protestants  and  the 
weight  of  testimony,  so  far  as  I  have  had  time  to  gather, 
favor  a  site  outside  the  present  wall,  not  far  from  the  Da- 
mascus gate,  as  being  the  place  where  our  Lord  was  cruci- 
fied and  buried.  But  we  cannot  go  into  this.  In  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  the  so-called  site  of  Calvary 
and  the  grave  of  Christ,  belong  in  common  to  all  sects. 
After  that,  the  many  chapels,  niches,  are  divided  up  among 
various  creeds  for  their  exclusive  use.  The  Romans, 
Greeks,  Armenians,  .Syrians  and  Copts  have  one  or  more 
chapels  each.  The  Protestants,  to  their  credit,  have  no 
part  in  these  unseemlj'^  and  bitter  jealousies.  The  score  or 
more  of  sacred  events  that  are  claimed  to  have  taken  place 
in  the  space  covered  by  this  church  is  enough  to  prove  the 
whole  claim  a  pious  fraud.  They  show  the  stone  of  unc- 
tion, the  exact  spot  from  which  Mary  viewed  the  crucifixion, 
the  graves  of  Nicodemus  and  Joseph  of  Arimathea,  of  Mel- 
chisedec  and  Adam,  chapels  of  the  Apparition,  of  the  Foot- 
prints of   Stocks,   of  the  Parting  of   Christ's  Raiment,    of 

56 


Eg^T^tian  Mary,  of  the  Archangel  Michael,  and  others,  with 
many  other  wonders,  not  least  being  the  center  of  the  world. 
Adam's  grave,  they  claim,  was  discovered  in  the  following 
miraculous  manner:  A  drop  of  blood  from  the  dying  Sav- 
iour as  he  hung  on  the  cross  a  few  steps  distant,  fell  on  the 
ground,  and  Adam's  head  came  out  of  its  hitherto  unknown 
grave  in  that  spot!  For  some  reason,  sufficient  to  the  ig- 
norant and  superstitious  mind  of  the  Greek  churchman, 
this  grave  marks  the  center  of  the  earth  and  they  show  to 
all  an  iron  post  stuck  in  the  ground  at  this  important  spot. 

For  possession  of  this  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  the 
Crusaders  fought  over  two  hundred  years,  and  paid  in  their 
vain  effort  to  rescue  it  permanently  from  infidel  hands,  per- 
haps ten  million  lives.  In  modern  times,  back  of  politics, 
I  am  told,  the  Crimean  war  was,  as  much  as  anything  else, 
a  contest  for  possession  of  the  key  to  this  church. 

But  most  thronging  with  holy  memories  is  Moriah's 
height,  where  Abraham,  and  for  a  thousand  years,  Israel, 
and  as  many  as  believe,  have  by  faith  offered  their  sacrifice 
unto  God.  As  your  readers  know,  the  whole  temple  areci 
is  in  the  hand  of  the  Moslem,  and  I  confess  I  am  glad  it 
is.  At  least,  this  is  preferable  to  a  duplication  of  the 
scenes  about  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Over  the 
rock  of  Moriah's  dome  is  the  Mosque  of  Omar,  with  its  ex- 
quisite design  and  faultless  execution,  and  to  the  south  of 
these  spacious  grounds  is  the  Mosque  of  El  Aksa.  In  the 
temple  area  fwe  best  found  seclusion  from  the  curious 
crowds,  and  in  this  spiritual  capital  of  God's  ancient  peo- 
ple we  lingered  as  a  vision  of  its  courts,  crowded  with  ex- 
pectant Israel,  peopled  these  vacant  grounds.  And  as  the 
smoke  and  incense  mingled  before  our  fancy,  as  it  as- 
cended, we  all  but  heard  God's  voice,  and  saw  the  shining 
from  the  Holy  Place  of  His  old-time  glor5\ 

Another  series   of  places  is   shown  the  tourist,   as  being 
where,   according   to   tradition,   this   or  that   biblical  event 

57 


took  place.  The  credulous  believe,  while  the  judicial,  with- 
out denying,  refuse  to  believe.  Still  other  differences  of 
opinion  as  to  location  of  some  places,  as  Calvary,  Caper- 
naum, Sodom,  etc.,  have  arisen  among  scholars  and  archae- 
ologists; often  evidence  and  authorities  being  divided. 

These  are  some  of  the  difficulties  that  await  every  trav- 
eler, eager  to  meet  the  heroic  spirits  in  the  places  where 
they  wrought,  and  to  catch  somewhat  of  their  inspiration 
for  these  new  times.  The  incongruity  in  many  places  be- 
tween the  magnificence  which  misguided  man  has  placed  and 
the  simplicity  demanded  by  the  event,  not  only  interrupts 
the  craved  vision,  but  is  apt  to  tempt  to  righteous  indigna- 
tion, and  I  fear  may  be,  indignation  which  is  not  alto- 
gether righteous. 

It  is  not  without  both  a  mental  and  spiritual  effort  that 
these  hindrances  are  turned  into  stepping  stones,  over  which 
we  climb  to  audience  with  prophet  and  apostle.  The  purely 
traditional  and  unimportant  we  dismissed  in  a  moment.  The 
fine  points  of  the  archaeologist  we  passed  by  for  the  most 
part.  The  strife  between  sects  over  places  whose  identifica- 
tion is  acknowledged  by  all,  we  tried  to  overlook.  And  we 
had  left  ,and  left  most  surely — what?  Several  places  posi- 
tively located,  Jerusalem,  with  its  undoubted  wonderful  en- 
virons, the  winding  ways  over  the  mountains  to  Samaria, 
and  Galilee,  with  its  sea  of  blue,  all  covered  by  the  loving 
ministry  of  the  iSaviour.  These  and  far  more  than  we  can 
here  tell,  are  enough  to  refresh  any  heart  and  pay  with  a 
measure  that  is  pressed  down  and  running  over  the  voy- 
ager for  his  long  quest. 

It  is  but  frank  to  say  that  as  in  new-made  America,  so 
even  in  Bethany  or  Gethsemane  of  Palestine,  God  speaks 
only  to  the  believing  and  hungry  soul.  Without  faith  it  is 
impossible  to  please  Him,  even  though  one  stand  under  Cal- 
vary's shadow;  or  to  see  Him  without  some  holiness  of 
heart.     No  magic  power  dwells  in  the  dumb  witnesses   of 

58 


miracles  to  cover  our  sins  and  bring  us  Christ.  They  are 
only  a  help,  a  subordinate  help,  too,  yet  one  which  is  a  priv- 
ilege to  have  and  for  which  for  a  life-time  to  be  grateful. 

There  is  danger,  perhaps,  of  allowing  one's  mind  to  run 
to  useless  reverie  and  even  to  enervating  sentimentalism, 
as  he  traces  with  eye  and  foot  the  pathways  of  prophets 
and  Saviour;  lest  after  the  mist  of  the  transient  emotion 
has  vanished,  he  is  either  no  better  or  the  worse  for  the 
vision  that  would  not  tarry.  But  on  the  other  hand,  is 
there  not  need  in  many  of  our  lives,  not  for  sickly  senti- 
mentalism, but  for  strong,  manly,  Christly  emotion?  Emo- 
tion not  isolated  from  truth  and  duty,  but  fed  by  the  fuel 
of  holy  facts,  and  guided  in  soberness  of  judgment;  an 
emotion  that  is  unashamed  to  love  strongly  and  sincerely, 
and  an  emotion  that  pricks  on,  a  none  too  willing  will,  to 
choose,  to  act,  and  to  lead? 

Some  of  the  heart's  inner  life  had  best  not  be  committed 
to  ink,  yet  a  few  words  of  spiritual  impression  that  came  to 
some  of  us  while  in  these  holy  places,  I  wish  briefly  to  add. 

First  of  all,  the  new  reality  of  the  actors  and  their  acts, 
as  I  stood  on  their  now  deserted  stage.  Christ's  and  Peter's 
sermons  had  an  unknown  concreteness  as  I  stood  in 
the  pulpit  from  which  they  were  delivered.  Seeing  the  ori- 
ental life  and  temper,  with  the  identical  landscape  before 
the  eyes,  one,  for  instance,  of  the  sweetest  pictures  in  all 
Christ's  varied  ministry  of  love,  described  in  the  hymn,  ^^At 
even,  ere  the  sun  was  set,  the  sick  around  thee  lay,"  had 
even  an  added  charm.  Yes,  I  say,  it  helped  to  make  more 
vivid  a  Christ  who  to  our  material  selves  is  none  too  near 
and  real.  In  every  place,  but  especially  in  these  historic 
spots,  one  should  feel  the  throb  of  God's  great  love.  Here 
love  patiently  wrought  out  what  in  eternity  it  had  decreed. 
And  such  love  in  the  face  of  such  undesert  and  such  in- 
gratitude! Are  those  yonder  not  tombs  of  prophets  who 
for  the  sake  of  bearing  God's  loving  message  of  warning, 
were   slain?     Here,   the   husbandmen   beat   and   stoned    the 

59 


servants  of  the  master  of  the  vineyard.  And  when  at  last 
the  only  Son  was  sent,  they  said,  ^'Come,  here  is  the  Son, 
let  us  kill  him."  And  they  did,  and  yonder  is  the  place. 
If  there  is  anything  in  the  association  of  ideas,  then  Pales- 
tine speaks  loudly  yet  tenderly  of  God's  love.  Who  has  not, 
when  visiting  the  grave  of  one  loved  and  lost  awhile,  given 
love's  tribute  of  a  tear,  as  silently  memory  brings  in  re- 
view the  affection  that  once  throbbed  for  you  in  the  prec- 
ious dust  at  your  feet?  Then  in  Bethlehem  and  Gethsem- 
ane,  Golgotha  and  Olivet,  shall  we,  can  we,  withhold  the 
tear  of  gratitude  in  remembrance  of  such  amazing  love  here 
poured  forth.  And  sin  never  seemed  more  dark  and  sinful 
than  when  I  saw  it  silhouetted  against  the  mountains  of 
God's  wonderful  love  and  of  Canaan. 

When  and  where  God  did  His  best,  Satan  did  his  worst. 
The  best  point  from  which  to  seek  to  fathom  to  the  nadir 
of  sin,  is  in  that  land  under  the  zenith  of  God's  portrayal 
of  true  holiness.  One  more  thought  that  must  come  to  every 
traveler  in  this  land,  where  before  the  fleshly  eye  even 
there  stretches  out  place  after  place  in  which  stand  in  long 
parallel  rows  the  heroes  of  faith  and  the  wrecks  of  unbe- 
lief. Here  in  the  local  coloring  you  can  study  from  God-'s 
Word  the  full  fruitage  of  faith  and  of  unbelief,  and  hear 
the  warning,  fresh  and  strong  against  the  latter,  and  the 
persuading  voice  tender,  yet  mighty,  wooing  us  to  the  for- 
mer. And  in  a  land  of  tombs,  from  many  of  which  there 
comes  the  unspoken  story  of  a  life-work  unfinished  or  per- 
haps not  begun,  Jesus'  words,  ''Work  while  it  is  day,  for 
the  night  comes,  when  no  man  can  work,"  are  never  so  ap- 
propriate. If  the  words  of  Christ,  ''What  thou  doest,  do 
quickly,"  to  one  bent  on  darkest  sin,  were  in  place,  how 
much  more  to  us,  bent  to  holier  purpose,  I  trust,  come  these 
same  words.  Unless  quickly  done,  it  is  undone  forever,  and 
may  be  we,  the  non-doer,  too! 

But  few,  comparatively  speaking,  of  God's  children,  come 
to  these  "holy  places."     And  unquestionably  they  miss  a 

60 


definite  touch  and  help,  which  this  setting  of  Bible  history 
gives.  Yet  if  denied  this,  the  greatest  and  best  help  to 
know  and  grow  like  God  is  not  denied.  This  is  God's  Word 
opened  unto  us  by  His  Spirit,  a  heritage  that  is  every  one's 
for  the  asking  and  the  using.  And  if  there  be  differences 
of  opinion  or  uncertainty  as  to  the  place  where  this  or  that 
event  took  place,  or  as  to  the  time  or  the  manner,  let  us 
be  thankful  there  is  no  uncertainty  as  to  the  fact.  And  if 
we  cannot  know  all,  may  we  be  wise  to  grasp  the  plain  es- 
sentials, leaving  to  time  and  to  God  the  unravelling  of  the 
uncertain  and  unnecessary  details. 


01 


HIGH  PLACES  IN  PALESTINE. 


The  geography  of  Palestine,  though  it  looks  as  if  it  should 
be  very  easy  to  learn,  has  to  me  been  hard  to  picture  ac- 
curately and  correctly.  And  since  without  being  able  to 
do  this,  one  misses  many  a  beautiful  and  practical  light 
upon  the  Word  of  God,  the  study  of  the  geography  of  this 
land  is  very  important.  There  came  to  me  as  I  went  over 
this  land,  and  I  wish  to  suggest  it  to  the  younger  readers, 
an  easy  and  beautiful  way  to  study  Palestine.  It  is  not  by 
natural,  tribal  or  political  divisions.  It  is  not  to  study  a 
city  or  section  chronologically,  as  its  history  is  unwound  in 
the  Bible.  But  it  is  to  take  certain  central  places  and  as  the 
eye  sweeps  the  horizon  to  note  every  place  in  sight  that  may 
be  connected  with  any  part  of  the  Bible  history  and  so  to 
this  center,  where  you  stand,  relate  and  tie  the  surround- 
ing sites.  Such  a  system  is  neither  logical  nor  exhaustive, 
yet  as  a  side-study  may  be  both  pleasant  and  profitable. 

Beginning  at  Jericho,  we  go  to  Jerusalem,  and  thence 
northward  to  Mt;  Gerizim,  Nazareth  and  the  Sea  of  Gali- 
lee. Jericho  is  anything  but  a  high  place  in  point  of  alti- 
tude, being  1,300  feet  below  the  level  of  the  sea.  But  as 
a  point  of  observation,  though  situated  in  the  edge  of  the 
level  and  depressed  Jordan  Valley,  the  compass  of  the  naked 
eye  encloses  a  surprisingly  large  and  interesting  cluster  of 
Scripture  incidents.  Standing  on  the  ruins  of  the  first  Jer- 
icho, iwe  see  beneath  our  feet,  uncovered  by  the  recent  Ger- 
man excavations,  the  foundations  of  the  walls,  deep  down 
in  the  ground,  that  tumbled  down  at  the  blast  of  the  rams' 
horns.  This  city  is  utterly  a  ruin.  A  mile  or  two  due  south 
is  the  site  of  the  Jericho  of  Christ's  time,  also  in  ruins, 
while   a  mile  to  your  southeast  is   Jericho  No.   3,   a   small 

62 


squalid  Moslem  village  \vitli,  however,  ILree  or  four  modem 
hotels.  At  the  southeast  corner  of  Joshua's  Jericho  is  a 
full-gro^Ti  creek,  bursting  from  the  rock  and  supposed  by 
many  to  be  the  fountain  whose  waters  were  healed  by 
Elisha.  The  second  Jericho  referred  tc)  brings  to  mind  our 
Saviour's  interview  with  Bartimaeus  and  the  two  blind  beg- 
gars, and  also  the  conversion  of  Zaecheus,  and  his  joyful 
hospitality   to   the   new-found    Messiah. 

Between  the  city  of  Rahab  and  that  of  this  converted 
publican  is  the  road  to  Jerusalem,  winding  steeply  up  the 
Kelt  valley  to  the  west,  while  far  to  the  south,  just  west 
of  the  Dead  Sea,  looms  up  the  sterile  mountains  of  the  Wil- 
derness of  Judea.  Directly  between  you  and  the  Dead  Sea, 
and  perhaps  a  little  to  the  left,  are,  in  the  opinion  of  many, 
the  sites  of  iSodom  and  Gomorrah,  whose  ruins  even  are  lost 
to  man's  knowledge.  Turn  in  your  tracks  forty-five  degrees, 
and  across  the  Jordan  plain  or  valley  (15  miles  wide)  to 
the  left  of  the  Dead  Sea,  you  see  like  a  mighty  rampart  of 
blue,  the  Mountains  of  Moab.  About  half-way  up  stood 
Herod's  castle  of  Machaerus,  where  John  the  Baptist  paid 
his  head  for  his  soul.  And  farther  and  higher,  on  the  sum- 
mit, from  where  must  be  an  unsurpassed  panorama  of  Ca- 
naan, lie  Mt.  Pisgah  and  Nebo.  Looking  now  due  east  two 
miles  towards  the  Jordan  is  Gilgal,  with  its  memorial 
stones,  the  first  capital  of  Israel's  worship  and  in  later 
times  the  site  of  one  of  the  schools  of  the  prophets.  Sev- 
eral miles  beyond  here  is  the  Jordan,  and  somewhere  nearby 
the  scene  of  Christ's  baptism.  It  can't  be  far  to  the  place 
where  twice  a  dry  passage  way  through  the  Jordan  was 
made  by  God — first  for  the  home-coming  of  the  long-time 
wanderers,  and  then  for  the  exit  of  the  aged  Elijah  from 
Canaan  on  his  way  to  meet  God's  chariot.  The  blue  moun- 
tains up  which  he  climbed  to  meet  God  are  in  plain  view, 
and  down  these  same  mountains  to  the  Jordan,  maybe  by 
the  same  way,  slowly  wound  the  three  million  children  of 
Jacob,    weary   and   home-sick.      If   from   our   view-point   in 

63 


Jericho  we  turn  towards  the  west,  within  a  mile  or  two 
rises  a  steep  mountain,  perhaps  two  thousand  feet  high. 
This  is  the  traditional  Mount  of  Temptation.  So  is  com- 
pleted the  circuit  of  vision  from  our  first  ''High  Place.'' 

The  most  interesting  high  place  is  our  second,  Jerusalem, 
or  more  exactly,  the  top  of  the  Mount  of  Olives.  It  is  high 
in  altitude  as  well  as  commanding  a  panarama  of  magnifi- 
cent sweep.  The  wilderness  of  Judea,  the  Dead  Sea,  the 
Valley  of  the  Jordan  and  beyond  these  the  towering  moun- 
tain plateau  of  Moab  can  be  distinctly  seen  in  the  east. 
Facing  the  south,  the  nearest  place  of  interest  to  be  seen, 
is,  almost  hidden  behind  the  brow  of  the  mount  itself,  that 
loved  retreat  of  Jesus  from  the  tumult  and  unbeleif  of  Je- 
rusalem— Bethany.  Five  miles  farther  south,  but  out  of 
sight  by  reason  of  an  intervening  hill,  is  Bethlehem,  with 
its  manger,  flanked  on  the  east  by  the  field  where  very 
probably  Ruth  gleaned  and  the  startled  shepherds  heard  first 
the  angels'  announcement  of  the  glad  tidings. 

Southwest  from  where  we  stand  on  Olivet,  and  about  two 
miles  away,  in  a  deep  ravine,  meet  the  valleys  of  the  Ked- 
ron  and  of  Hinnom,  and  beyond  their  junction  the  Hill  of 
Evil  Counsel,  where,  according  to  tradition,  Judas  hanged 
himself.  But  the  western  view  from  our  high  place!  Who 
can  enumerate,  much  less  describe,  the  capital  events  that 
crowd  the  landscape?  Below  us,  between  us  and  the  Ked- 
ron,  is  Gethsemane.  Up  this  brook's  western  hill  winds  the 
road  our  Lord  went  and  came  to  and  from  Bethany;  and 
the  way  he  went  from  Gethsemane,  but  not  the  way  he  came 
back  to  Olivet!  And  on  the  hill — Jerusalem!  Nearest  and 
most  conspicuous  is  Mt.  Moriah,  with  the  thirty-five  acres 
in  the  precincts  of  the  temple.  To  the  left  and  farther 
back  is  seen  Mt.  Zion,  the  home  and  throne  of  Da\'id  and 
Solomon.  Yonder  in  plain  view,  no  matter  which  of  the 
disputed  sites  is  taken,  is  Calvary!  But  enough  to  say  Je- 
rusalem— let  each  for  himself  fill  out  the  picture. 

64 


w 
^ 

H 


> 


On  a  high  mountain  top,  far  to  the  northwest,  yet  dis- 
tinctly visible,  is  Mizpeh,  where  Israel  offered  sacrifices 
and  ratified  the  election  of  Saul  as  king,  and  also  one  of  the 
points  where  Samuel  judged  Israel.  To  the  north  are  the 
mountains  of  Benjamin,  over  which  Christ  and  the  Gali- 
leans came  to  and  went  from  the  Jewish  feasts.  Nor  must 
we  forget  that  on  the  mount  on  which  we  stand  Jesus  wept 
over  the  doomed  city  across  the  Kedron,  and  also  from  here 
he  mounted  up  to  his  Mediatorial  throne.  From  this  high 
place,  then,  we  can  see  the  stage  upon  which  was  acted  half 
and,  (if  one  half  can  be  more  important  than  the  other)  the 
more  important  half  of  Bible  history. 

Forty  miles  north  of  Jerusalem,  almost  the  center  of  Pal- 
estine, is  another  site  with  a  commanding  view  of  both  land- 
scape and  history — Mt.  Gerizim,  our  third  high  place.  Some 
of  our  party  climbed  to  its  summit  and  were  richly  re- 
warded. The  Jordan  Valley  and  the  mountains  beyond  were 
clearly  seen  in  the  east,  the  Great  Sea  in  the  far  west,  and 
snow-clad  Hermon  to  the  north.  Across  the  narrow  inter- 
vening valley,  rising  to  the  height  of  3,076  feet,  is  its  twin, 
Mt.  Ebal,  from  which  the  curses  were  read,  alternately  with 
the  blessings  from  Gerizim,  to  Israel  in  the  valley  between. 
Less  than  a  mile  west  from  this  point,  and  in  the  same  val- 
ley, is  Sheehem,  the  oldest  sacred  place  in  Palestine  (Gen. 
12:6),  the  capital  of  Jeroboam  *s  kingdom  and  today,  as  in 
Christ's  time,  the  center  of  the  Samaritan  faith.  At  the 
eastern  base  of  Mt.  Gerizim,  Jacob's  Well  is  seen,  bringing 
to  our  mind  that  worthy  patriarch  and  the  wonderful  in- 
terview between  Christ  and  the  woman  of  Samaria.  On 
top  of  Gerizim  are  the  ruins  of  the  old  Samaritan  temple, 
where,  according  to  the  Samaritans,  Abraham  offered  up 
Isaac  and  where  in  Christ's  time  they  worshipped,  and 
where  once  a  year  yet,  the  dwindling  sect  of  less  than  200 
go  and  offer  their  blood  sacrifices  on  the  day  of  the  Pass- 
over. 

65 


I  had  from  my  reading,  which  has  been  none  too  extended, 
no  idea  how  beautiful  is  the  place  where  Jesus  grew  iu 
statue  and  in  favor  with  God  and  man.  If  I  had  to  name 
one  most  beautiful  view  in  Palestine,  that  view  would  be — 
from  Najzareth.  The  town,  now  become  quite  a  city,  is 
compactly  built  three-fourths  up  a  mountain  side,  rising 
from  the  Plain  of  Jezreel.  Its  sole  distinction  is  in  being 
the  home  and  the  scene  of  the  interrupted  ministry  of  that 
one  citizen  whom  it  tried  in  vain  to  kill.  Let  us  climb  the 
other  fourth  way  to  the  top  of  the  towering  peak  beyond 
and  above  Nazareth,  and  from  this  high  place,  let  us  re- 
late a  few  of  the  places  and  incidents  before  our  eyes.  In 
a  valley  several  thousand  feet  below  lies  Cana  and  thence 
undulating  plains,  gTOwing  hills  and  mountains  of  Naphtali 
unto  that  hoary-headed  sentinel  in  the  north — Mt.  Hermon. 
A  little  south  of  east  is  rounded  Mt.  Tabor,  while  farther 
east  is  the  Plain  of  the  Jordan  and  the  mountains  of  Gil- 
boa  beyond.  In  a  opposite  direction  over  a  hundred  hill- 
sides and  mountain  slopes,  glistening  in  green  as  a  late  aft- 
ernoon sun  shone  softly  upon  it,  was  the  distant  blue  of 
the  Great  Sea,  over  whose  waters  sailed  unwilling  Jonah, 
and  more  than  willing  Paul.  Jutting  into  this  sea  we  saw 
the  western  point  of  Mt.  Carmel,  and  tracing  its  even  out- 
line to  its  southeastern  point,  we  saw  afar  the  traditional 
place  of  the  conflict  between  Elijah  and  the  Prophets  of 
Baal.  But  we  have  saved  for  the  last  the  prospect  south- 
ward. Here,  shut  in  on  all  sides  by  mountains  is  a  valley 
of  triangular  green  and  in  the  gloi*y  of  that  afternoon  sun, 
a  scene  of  surpassing  beauty — the  Plain  of  Jezreel  or  Es- 
draelon.  The  sides  of  this  triangle  are  fifteen  or  twenty 
miles  each  and  if  it  were  possible,  even  fuller  of  historic 
interest  than  natural  beauty.  In  this  valley  are  Jezreel,  Jenin, 
Shunem,  and  on  the  sides  of  Little  Hermon,  which  forms  the 
eastern  side  of  the  triangle,  Nain  and  Endor.  Across  this 
plain,  back  and  forth  went  Elijah,  Ahab,  with  infamous  Jez- 

66 


ebel,  furious  Jehu,  scores  of  other  Old  Testament  worthies., 
as  well  as  the  boy,  youth  and  preacher,  Jesus.  Here,  fer- 
tilizing the  myriad  flowers  of  this  small  area,  blood  has 
flown  in  a  large  stream  nearly  four  thousand  years  long. 
For  in  this  peaceful  vale  before  our  eyes,  there  locked  in 
frightful  mortal  combat,  Barak  and  Sisera,  Gideon  and 
Oreb  and  Zeeb,  Josiah  and  Pharaoh,  Romans  and  Jews, 
Crusaders  and  (Saracens,  and  French  (under  Napoleon)  and 
Turks!  While  on  the  edge  of  Gilboa's  mountains,  forming 
the  southeast  angle  of  this  martial  valley,  Saul  and  Jona- 
than came  to  their  unhappy  end  at  the  hands  of  inveterate 
Philistia. 

From  the  viewpoint  where  we  stood  and  enraptured 
looked,  Jesus,  familiar  with  everj^  event  and  not  unappre- 
ciative  of  the  natural  glory,  looked  and  looke'd  as  he  grew 
into  maturity  and  when  mature  went  forth  to  a  battle  far 
eclipsing  all  of  these. 

Our  last  high  place  is  the  Sea  of  Galilee.  Like  Jericho, 
it  is  high  as  a  view-point,  though  far  below  the  sea  level. 
From  our  little  fisherman  boats  in  the  midst  of  this  heart- 
shaped  blue,  set  in  varying  emerald  of  plain  and  mountain^ 
let  us  take  our  last  look  at  Canaan.  Hermon,  where  per- 
haps our  Lord  was  transfigured,  looks  down  as  usual  upon 
us  from  its  snowy  north,  while  to  the  right  of  where  the 
Jordan  enters  the  Sea  of  Galilee  is  the  site  of  Bethsaida,  to 
the  east  Gergesa,  and  back  of  the  steep  mountains  'Hhe 
desert,"  while  coming  down  with  the  eye  the  western  shore 
are  Chorazin,  Bethsaida  of  Galilee,  Capernaum,  Magdala, 
each  with  some  rich,  if  sad,  story  of  the  Messiah's  minis- 
try. Looking  southwest  through  a  deep  gorge  are  the  Horns 
of  Hattin,  where  most  agree,  I  believe,  that  Jesus  preached 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  But  as  if  to  cover  all  the  land 
here  with  words  of  truth  and  deeds  of  love  were  not  enough, 
he  covered  in  like  manner  the  waters  about  our  boat,  they 
proving  a  pavement,  a  pulpit  and  a  power  to  be  tamed.  And 

67 


as  if  this  busy  life  were  not  enough,  here,  after  Calvary  he 
fished  with  the  disconsolate  fishermen,  partook  with  them 
of  the  fish-fry,  that  wondrous  day-dawn  and  crowned  this 
incident  which  to  me  for  very  exquisiteness  stands  almost 
apart,  with  His  searching  yet  tender  interview  with  Peter, 
and  then — vanished! 

But  enough.  I  thought  these  brief  views  from  these  high 
places  of  nature  and  sacred  history  might  help  some  in  the 
homeland  from  their  high  place  of  spiritual  privilege  better 
to  see  and  to  serve  our  God  the  Most  High. 


68 


MISSIONS  IN  PALESTINE. 


Yes,  in  Palestine —  in  Hebron,  the  home  of  Abraham,  in 
Bethlehem  and  Nazareth,  and  in  the  city  where  David  sang 
and  Christ  died.  Of  all  places  where  one  would  think  mis- 
sions would  not  be  necessary  these  would  be  the  last.  Yet 
missions  are  here  and  the  need  is  as  strong  as  it  is  sad  and 
even   humiliating. 

The  religious  situation  here  is  as  complex  as  it  can  well 
be,  and  the  work  of  missions  is  correspondingly  difficult. 
Palestine  (by  which  I  mean  the  section  west  of  the  Jor- 
dan) has  been  assumed  by  the  Church  of  England  as  its 
field.  And  the  Missionary  Society  of  this  church  is  doing 
a  good  work,  mention  of  which  will  be  made  later  on.  Of 
Protestant  bodies  we  find  also  work  being  conducted  by  the 
Christian  and  Missionary  Alliance  of  '^The  States'^  and  by 
the  Lutheran  Church  of  Germany.  These  churches  are  but 
the  beginning  of  ecclesiastical  complexity,  not  to  say  clash- 
ing. Strong,  shrewd  and  aggressive  en  every  high  place 
is  the  Romanist  and  more  numerous  but  less  powerful  is  the, 
Greek  Church  (largely  Russian),  with  its  priests  of  long 
hair  and  robes,  but  abbreviated  education.  Add  to  these, 
Armenians,  Syrians  and  Copts,  with  their  chapels  an^ 
churches  here  and  there,  and  then  thousands  of  Jews,  ac- 
cepting one  part  (in  form  at  least)  of  our  Bible  and  reject- 
ing the  other,  and  the  mixture  becomes  more  mixed.  To 
complicate  still  further  is  the  omnipresent  Moslem,  pro- 
fessing greatly  to  revere  Noah,  Abraham  and  Christ,  yet 
who  is  a  prince  among  unbelieving  fanatics;  and  to  com* 
plete  the  picture  of  religious  pandemonium,  here  are  by  the 
thousands  the  children  of  Abraham  according  to  the  flesh 

69 


(through  Hagar)  yet  alas,  poor  wondering  Bedouins,  some- 
body else's  children  according  to  the  spirit.  Here  is  a  re- 
ligious conglomerate  of  the  most  incompatible  parts — a  con- 
dition conducive  neither  to  spiritual  peace  nor  progress. 

As  if  that  were  not  enough,  the  complexity  and  therefore 
the  diflSculty  of  mission  work  is  still  further  increased  by 
the  presence  of  the  many  ''holy  places"  It  may  sound 
strange,  yet  I  believe  it  is  true,  that  the  fact  that  Christ 
was  born  in  Bethlehem,  coupled  as  it  is  with  so  much  cere- 
monial trumpeiy,  is  a  hindrance  to  the  Bethlehemites  receiv- 
ing Him  as  Saviour!  The  Nazarenes  today  as  of  old  are 
less  ready  to  believe  on  the  Carpenter's  Son,  because  He 
lived  there  and  because  of  the  lives  of  some  of  His  follow- 
ers there.  Jerusalem,  by  being  the  capital  of  Israel,  brings 
together  such  crowds  of  pilgrims  and  fanatics  and  has  been 
the  scene  of  such  unseemly,  even  fatal  clashes  between  the 
misguided  or  supposed  followers  of  Christ,  that  the  people 
bom  and  reared  under  the  shadow  of  the  Temple  and  of 
Calvary,  are,  instead  of  being  helped  to  the  .Saviour  by  their 
nativity  in  these  places,  rather  hindered  from  coming  to 
Him!  And  as  a  result  of  man's  perversions  and  perverse- 
ness,  the  land  that  should  go  far  to  interpret  God's  loving 
purpose  in  the  Gospel  of  His  Son  (and  does  do  so  to  the 
intelligent  and  unfettered  soul)  is  to  the  native  untutored 
folk  here  a  stumbling  block  and  a  rock  of  offence. 

Without  this  seemingly  unnecessary  handicap,  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  condition  of  these  people  offers  sufficient 
difficulties  to  satisfy  the  most  strenuous.  Ignorance  lacks 
only  a  small  per  cent  of  being  unanimous  and  its  twin- 
brother,  poverty,  is  co-extensive  with  it.  And  with  the 
narrow  vision,  ambition  cannot  thrive  and  in  the  homes  of 
penury,  hope  fights  hard  to  live,  and  as  a  result  the  people 
become  listless,  inert,  and  stolid.  To  see  the  dullness  and 
deadness  of  any  people  is  painful  enough,  but  to  see  these 
things  in  this  land  of  spiritual  vision  and  apostolic  achieve- 

70 


ment  is  too  pathetic  for  words.  Under  these  unroseate  cir- 
cumstances, the  work  of  winning  to  Christ  these  millions  is 
being  prosecuted.  The  oldest  and  largest  work  is  that  by 
the  Church  of  England.  I  speak  only  of  Protestant  mis- 
sions. My  opportunity  of  first-hand  knowledge  was  all  too 
limited,  yet  w^hat  I  saw  and  heard  was  doubtless  typical  of 
the  whole.  Several  of  our  party  went  over  the  English 
College  in  Jerusalem  and  spent  a  pleasant  hour  with  its 
earnest  young  president.  The  college  is  young,  small,  in 
hired  quarters,  and  hardly  a  real  college,  yet  doing  good 
work  and  with  as  encouraging  a  prospect  as  many  another 
institution  of  similar  character.  The  opposition  which  was 
most  disheartening  to  me  was  that  existing  between  this 
institution  and  the  Bishop  Gobat  School,  also  under  the 
Church  of  England  and  situated  in  Jerusalem.  These  rival 
schools,  as  I  was  informed  by  disinterested  parties,  are  car- 
rying on  a  contest  between  high  and  low  churchism!  What 
a  pity  the  question  of  candles,  phylacteries  and  foolishness 
had  not  been  left  beyond  the  English  channel  so  as  not  to 
eonfuse  and  hinder  in  giving  the  cup  of  salvation  to  the 
thirsting  ones  in  the  land  of  Jesus. 

We  had  a  glimpse  of  the  church  and  hospital  at  Nablu5 
(Shechem)  and  met  several  of  the  workers  there.  But  one 
of  the  best  as  well  as  the  largest  works  of  the  Missionary 
Society  is  in  Nazareth.  We  had  time  to  visit  only  the 
girls'  orphanage.  This  is  ideally  located,  with  beautiful 
grounds  and  ample  buildings  and  most  efficiently  managed 
by  some  English  ladies  who  were  as  hospitable  to  us  as  they 
are  devoted  to  these  seventy  fatherless  little  girls  of  Naza- 
reth. Besides  the  three  places  mentioned,  this  church  has 
workers  also  in  Jaffa,  Haifa,  Bethlehem  and  many  country 
villages.  There  are  forty-five  day  schools  for  boys  and  girls 
(the  sexes  have  separate  schools),  two  boarding  schools  for 
boys  and  three  for  girls.  This  educational  department  in 
point    of    the  number  of  missionaries  as  well  as  efficiency 

71 


most  impressed  me.  Medical  missions,  with  nine  physicians, 
a  number  of  nurses,  and  two  hospitals,  come  next  in  size 
at  least,  while  last,  numerically,  come  the  eight  English 
clergymen.  In  the  regular  preaching,  the  work  struck  me, 
in  comparison  with  the  other  departments,  as  being  very 
much  under-manned,  and  for  this  reason,  if  not  others,  as 
being  the  least  aggressive  form  of  the  Missions'  work. 

The  Christian  and  Missionai*y  Alliance  has  a  small  work 
in  Jerusalem,  Hebron  and  Beersheba.  In  the  first  two 
places  schools  are  conducted,  in  the  first  of  which  some  of 
us  spent  part  of  an  afternoon;  while  in  the  hall  of  the  Mis- 
sion school  in  Hebron  our  party  was  kindly  permitted  co 
eat  their  lunch  and  rest  several  hours.  These  workers  are 
few  in  number,  and  while  their  church  relation  is  anoma- 
lous and  open  to  criticism,  they  are  self-sacrificing  and  red 
hot  in  their  evangelistic  zeal. 

The  German  Lutherans  have  a  number  of  semi-mission 
or  philanthropic  institutions  in  Jerusalem,  though  accord- 
ing to  my  informant,  their  attention  is  paid  largely  to  Ger- 
man colonists  and  pilgrims. 

Perhaps  Palestine  is  better  manned  than  the  majority  of 
mission  fields,  yet  considering  the  peculiar  difficulties,  the 
world-wide  interest  in  this  land  and  the  fields  white  unto 
harvest,  one  could  not  help  wishing  here  a  larger  and  more 
aggressive  work.  At  the  same  time,  after  seeing  so  many 
corrupt  forms  of  religion  and  so  much  irreligion,  for  the 
few  sacrificing  lives  our  hearts  were  glad,  and  were  per- 
suaded that  their  fruits  will  certainly  be  larger  as  the  years 
go  by. 

Our  Church  has  no  financial  part  in  any  work  in  this 
country.  Yet  for  the  sake  of  these  Christless  thousands 
in  the  land  that  gave  us  Jesus,  may  each  of  us  feel  a  new 
interest,  and  forget  not  in  our  supplications  to  remember 
these  fainting  ones  under  sin's  heavy  load  and  the  mission- 
ary endeavor  in  their  behalf. 

72 


MOHAMMEDANISM. 


This  letter  does  not  purport  to  be  critical  or  scholarly, 
but  aims  only  to  give  some  of  the  impressions  that  came  to 
the  writer  during  the  six  weeks'  journeyings  in  the  lands  of 
the  Mosque  and  the  Minaret.  For  impressed  we  were.  None 
but  dead  men  could  be  unimpressed. 

One  thought  that  would  not  leave  me,  is  that  Mohamme- 
danism as  a  religion  is  a  genius.  A  twin  thought  and  one 
inseparable  from  its  mate  is,  that  it  is  an  evil  genius.  The 
history  of  this  religion  from  its  beginning  in  the  seventh 
century  till  it  numbers  225,000,000  followers  today,  or 
one-seventh  of  the  human  family,  is  startHng.  Besides 
overrunning  Africa,  Asia,  part  of  Europe,  and  possessing 
a  thousand  islands  in  many  seas,  we  have  over  a  quarter 
of  a  million  under  our  own  Stars  and  Stripes  in  the  Phil- 
ippines. This  brief  statement  proves  the  genius  of  Islam 
just  as  a  little  scrutiny  of  the  fruitage  of  these  thirteen 
centuries  will  prove  how  evil  a  genius  it  has  been  and  is. 

There  have  occurred  to  me  a  number  of  phases,  making 
up  this  composite  genius,  and  for  what  they  are  worth  they 
are  briefly  given  below. 

First.  Its  Geographical  Center — Mecca.  It  may  seem 
an  indifferent  thing  that  this  religion  has  a  local  world- 
capital  which  is  to  every  believer  the  center  of  the  world. 
Yet  this  doubtless  has  been  and  certainly  today  is  a  most 
powerful  unifying  factor.  Thither  they  go  from  all  over 
the  Moslem  world,  and  in  so  doing  gain  for  themselves  great 
merit.  The  fact  that  Mecca  is  isolated  and  extremely  hard 
to  get  to  but  enhances  the  value  to  the  pilgrim  by  increas- 
ing the  difficulties  to  be  overcome.  The  prayer-niche  in 
every  Mosque  and  every  worshipper  in  prayer,  faces  Mecca, 

73 


so  that  the  architecture  of  one  and  the  physical  attitude 
of  the  other  brings  before  the  faithful  a  picture  of  the  Holy 
Cit}^,  his  Jerusalem,  the  citadel  of  his  great  prophet.  A 
concrete  capital  appeals  mightily  to  man  who  is  so  largely 
concrete. 

Second.  Another  thing,  seemingly  insignificant,  which 
helps  to  make  powerful  this  faith  is  its  short  epigrammatic 
shibboleth:  *^ There  is  no  God  but  one,  and  Mohammed  is 
his  prophet."  The  child  learns  it  among  his  first  lessons. 
The  most  ignorant  know  it  and  the  scholarly  know  little 
more.  Each  devout  worshipper  repeats  it  thirty-five  times, 
five  times  every  day,  and  it  is  the  battle  cry  of  the  soldier 
as  he  rushes  into  death.  As  Mecca  among  places  ~is  the 
center  of  the  Moslem  world,  so  this  shibboleth  is  the  heart 
of  the  Moslem  creed. 

Third.  In  few  particulars  is  this  Eastern  faith  more  won- 
derful than  in  its  adaptability  to  the  Oriental  temperament. 
They  like  form,  and  the  five  daily  calls  to  prayer,  the  ablu- 
tions and  other  requirements  satisfy  this  demand.  They 
grow  from  listlessness  into  stoicism  and  find  this  disposi- 
tion met  in  the  fatalism  of  Mohamet.  In  common  with  his 
Western  brother,  the  man  in  the  East  loves  self-merit  and 
this  desire  is  gratified,  too,  while  no  religious  duty  imposed 
by  his  religion  is  much  more  to  his  liking  than  the  fighting 
enjoined  by  his  creed,  or  at  least  by  its  history.  The  Ori- 
ental is  superstitious  to  the  last  degree,  but  not  so  much 
that  his  religion  doesn't  satiate  him  in  this  commodity  and 
still  have  some  to  spare. 

Fourth.  Their  method  of  religious  education  (and  that 
is  nearly  the  only  kind  they  have)  may  violate  every  rule 
of  pedagogy  but  it  accomplishes  wonders  in  the  way  they 
wish  it.  Their  method  seems  to  be  to  memorize  the  Koran. 
Child,  youth,  even  old  men  do  it.  In  the  Arab  University 
in  Cairo,  with  its  twelve  thousand  students,  I  saw  every 
age  from  seven  years  to  seventy  and  seven — or  to  old  gray- 

74 


headed  men  at  least — swaying  their  bodies  back  and  fortl? 
as  they  mumbled  over  portions  of  the  Koran.  The  Koran 
is  magnified  till  it  stands  out  before  them  unrivaled.  From 
their  standpoint  they  know  it  and  believe  in  it  absolutely, 
consequently  when  it  commands  or  prohibits,  the  Moslem 
world  obeys  to  an  extent  truly  remarkable.  And,  by  the  way, 
what  wonders  they  have  wrought  by  this  method  in  behalf  of 
their  faith  is  an  illustration,  if  extreme,  of  what  we  Pres- 
byterians may  secure  for  our  precious  faith  by  a  greater  fi- 
delity in  memorizing  the  Word  of  God  and  the  Catechisms. 

Fifth.  Their  Shibboleth  has  been  called  the  gTeat  truth 
and  the  great  lie.  It  is  well  described  so.  And  on  the 
strength  of  that  truth,  which  appeals  to  every  rational  man 
with  irresistible  force,  that  is  seen  in  nature  and  in  man, 
the  great  lie  rode  in.  Mohamet  so  joined  in  unholy  union 
these  two  statements,  that  the  true  one  might  tow  down 
the  centuries  the  false  one,  till  aided  by  unbelief  and  lust 
it  should  grow  in  strength  to  go  in  its  own  power.  In  an 
age  of  oncoming  idolatry,  Islam's  genius  showed  itself  by 
putting  paramount  a  much  needed  doctrine,  ^^  There  is  but 
one  God;''  and  showed  this  genius  to  be  evil  by  linking  to 
it  the  lie,  ** Mohamet  is  his  prophet.'^ 

Sixth.  Following  a  suggestion  from  the  preceding  para- 
graph, we  find  still  another  phase  of  this  evil  genius.  Mo- 
hamet, who  came  in  frequent  if  not  daily  contact  with  Jews 
and  Christians,  instead  of  antagonizing  them  by  utter  re- 
jection of  the  Bible,  was  shrewd  enough  to  take  from  the 
Scriptures  (accepted  in  whole  or  in  part  by  these  sects) 
some  of  its  greatest  characters,  such  as  Noah,  Abraham, 
David  and  Christ.  These  characters  he  remolded  accord- 
ing to  his  own  fancy  which  meant  their  distortion  and  sub- 
ordination to  himself.  In  an  hour's  conversation  with  an 
intelligent  Moslem,  he  seemed  greatly  shocked  and  pro- 
tested vigorously  when  I  asked  him  his  reason  for  not  ac- 
cepting Christ.    '^We  do  believe  in  Christ,  but  He  is  not  di- 

75 


vine;  He  did  not  die  and  therefore  did  not  make  any  atone- 
ment. .  .  .  And  last  and  greatest  is  Mohamet."  Tims 
has  this  religion  thrived,  not  by  directly  denying  God's 
Word,  but  by  subtly  changing  it  or  part  of  it  into  a  lie. 

Seventh.  To  add  only  one  more  phase,  Mohammedanism 
is  an  easy  religion  and  man  likes  that  kind.  Its  morals  are 
loose.  The  founder  himself  taught  by  precept  and  example 
how  and  when  the  sixth,  seventh,  eighth,  ninth  and  possibly 
other  of  the  Commandments  could  be  piously  broken.  This 
license  to  sin  under  the  cover  of  religion  appealed  to  the 
Eastern  sinner  who  wanted  to  sin  and  at  the  same  time  be 
religious.  Poor  carnal  man  loves  the  carnal,  and  this  re- 
ligion accommodates  this  propensity — sanctifies  his  carnal- 
ity, so  to  speak. 

''And  its  fruits?''  you  say.  Judged  by  this  scriptural 
meter,  the  tree  of  Islam  is  one  of  the  sourest  of  wild  crabs. 
It  is  self-condemned.  Its  a  long  dark  story — many  of  these 
fruits  I  have  read  of,  some  I  have  seen.  There  is  blood, 
rivers  of  blood — not  sacrificial  or  sacrificing — but  to  satiate 
cruelty,  rapine,  lust  and  to  spread  the  faith!  Deadening 
conservatism,  superstition,  fanaticism — these  are  painfully 
apparent  in  Egypt,  Palestine,  Syria  and  Turkey  today. 

Other  marks  of  this  evil  genius  are  degradation  of  wo- 
man, brutalizing  of  man,  and  spoliation  of  home.  Poverty 
of  every  kind  is  found  everywhere  in  its  wake — ^poverty  of 
material  wealth  in  some  of  the  richest  lands  of  the  world, 
impoverishment  of  mind,  illiteracy  being  all  but  a  universal 
blight  in  Moslem  lands  and  worst  of  all  poverty  of  moral 
and  spiritual  graces. 

And  if  one  asks  (as  he  must  when  he  lives  in  this  at- 
mosphere a  few  weeks),  how  did  Islam  arise  so  near  to  the 
land  of  the  Bible  and  so  thoroughly  overpower  this  and  all 
contiguous  countries,  the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  The 
Christian  church  had  been  planted  in  Arabia,  as  well  as  in 
Egypt,  Asia  Minor  and  Syria  ,and  of  course  Palestine,  but 

76 


it  did  what  Christ  warned  the  seven  churches  of  Asia 
against,  corrupting  doctrine,  and  consequently  Christian  liv- 
ing and  activity.  With  a  cornipted  creed,  a  compromising 
life  and  inevitably  a  non-missionary  spirit,  the  Church  of 
Jesus  Christ  was  in  time  run  out  of  its  first  and  what 
should  have  been  its  strongest  territory,  the  land  of  its  na- 
tivity. Can  any  one  read  history  here  and  see  not  a 
solemn  warning  for  the  Church  of  today? 

Against  this  religion,  strongly  entrenched,  the  scattered 
missionary  forces  have  been  quietly  working  and  praying 
and — waiting.  The  full  victory  is  not  today,  nor  probably 
tomorrow,  but  its  futurity  does  not  affect  its  certainty.  But 
the  past  is  not  without  its  trophies.  Though  the  missions 
*o  this  pagan  faith  are  probably  less  known,  their  workers 
have  not  been  less  patient  and  persevering  and  heroic  than 
those  to  India,  China  and  Africa.  Of  missions  in  Egypt  and 
Palestine  I  have  spoken  in  previous  letters;  of  missions  in 
Syria  and  Turkey  I  have  not  time  to  speak  at  length.  I 
may  add,  however,  that  I  heard  a  good  sermon  by  a  big 
Irish  Presbyterian  missionary  in  a  native  church  in  that 
most  fanatical  Moslem  city — Damascus,  saw  beside  the  im- 
mense ruins  of  heathen  temples  at  Baaibec  a  mission  school 
and  church  and  was  shown  over  the  magnificent  Protestant 
Syrian  College  at  Beirut  with  its  848  students  from  all 
over  the  Turkish  Empire. 

Back  of  politics,  I  was  told  more  than  once,  that  the 
leavening  work  of  this  college  and  Roberts'  College  at  Con- 
stantinople,  was  the  primary  reason  of  last  year's  revolu- 
tion, which  resulted  in  the  overthrow  of  old  Abdul  Hamid 
and  his  miserable  regime.  We  can  often  see  improvements 
in  matters  of  liberty  and  civilization  more  plainly  than 
spiritual  life  and  advance,  but  as  effect  must  follow   ade- 

77 


quate  cause,  so  are  there  the  fruits  of  redemption  among 
this  obdurate  people.  And  these  new  proofs  of  God's 
power,  and  seals  of  His  blessing  are  also  earnest  of  what 
will  be  when  His  church  by  faith,  prayer,  and  obedience, 
fully  witnesses  here  of  the  Christ. 


78 


FOUR  SUNSETS. 


I  dare  not  say  they  were  more  beautiful  than  some  all 
of  us  have  seen  in  North  Carolina;  not  more  beautiful,  but 
different.  And  I  am  foolishly  attempting  to  give  some  idea 
of  them  to  those  who  were  not  with  me  to  see  and  enjoy 
them. 

We  had  had  a  strenuous  day,  riding  donkeys  out  across 
the  Nile  Valley  into  the  desert  to  see  the  Sakkara  Pyramid. 
And  when  we  were  back  to  the  Nile  and  aboard  our  boat, 
the  afternoon  was  far  spent.  Down  this  great  river  for  fif- 
teen miles  we  were  lazily  riding  to  Cairo.  Hardly  were  we 
half  way  when  a  silence  came  over  our  party  as  all  eyes 
turned  to  watch  the  sun  about  to  drop  into  the  yellow  sands 
of  the  Lybian  desert.  There  was  present  the  charm  of  the 
Nile  as  its  waters  lapped  our  boat.  There  was  the  beauty 
\of  green-fringed  banks,  almost  black  in  the  dying  light, 
while  here  and  yonder  were  clumps  of  quaint  homes  of  still 
quainter  people;  beyond  the  blossoming  valley  could  be  seen 
one  or  two  projecting  points  of  barren  sand  dunes,  above 
was  a  cloudless  sky,  and  diffused  between  our  feasting  eyes 
and  the  sun  of  this  closing  day,  was  a  light,  soft  and  rest- 
ful. 

Suddenly,  as  if  anxious  to  escape  our  impertinent  stare, 
bigger  and  softer  the  sun  grew  as  faster  and  faster  he  hur- 
ried our  of  our  sight.  Now  he  touches  Lybia;  now  is  half 
buried  in  its  sand.  Look!  only  his  eyes  and  forehead  are 
seen  as  he  gives  us  a  parting  peep.  Another  moment — a 
golden  crescent,  a  point,  a  glow;  then  a  sigh,  a  murmur 
of  admiration  from  all  as  one,  and  that  fair  Egyptian  day 
lay  dead. 

79 


To  add  a  further  interest  as  well  as  beauty,  after  the 
sun  was  gone  in  the  west,  we  saw  just  out  of  the  Arabian 
Desert  on  the  east,  the  full  orbed  vestal  of  night,  smiling 
her  greetings  at  us  and  proifering  her  help  to  guide  us 
safely  down  the  Nile. 

Few  spots  in  our  itinerary  were  all  of  our  party  more 
anxious  to  see  than  the  Sea  of  Galilee.  Rounding  a  low 
green  mountain,  we  caught  our  first  view  of  this  sea,  nest- 
ling far  below  us.  It  was  raining,  and  in  the  rain  we 
alighted  on  its  bank  and  in  the  soaking  weeds  and  grass, 
ate  our  lunch.  While  waiting  for  the  tents  to  arrive  and 
to  be  pitched,  some  of  us,  despite  the  warning  clouds,  put 
out  in  boats  for  Capernaum,  eight  miles  away.  It  rained 
harder  and  harder,  and  Galilee  showed  she  had  not  forgot- 
ten how  to  shake  herself  into  a  tempest.  But  on  we  went, 
though  some  were  sick  and  others,  if  not  scared,  at  least 
were  nervous.  Returning  late  in  the  afternoon,  the  wind 
and  rain  had  ceased  and  the  clouds  had  become  leaden.  Our 
little  boat,  hugging  the  shore,  came  opposite  the  plain  look- 
ing westward  that  lies  between  Magdala  and  Bethsaida. 
Then  suddenly  the  sun,  though  hidden,  blazed  from  behind 
the  clouds,  with  a  glory  that  diffused  itself  down 
to  and  across  the  little  sea.  It  was  a  sunset 
different  from  any  I  had  ever  seen.  The  effect  was  some- 
what as  if  some  city  between  which  and  you  a  great  moun- 
tain intervened  should  be  burning  in  the  night.  No  clear 
outline,  or  rivalling  colors  on  jealous  clouds  were  there, 
but  all  about  one  rich,  soft,  mellow  glory.  As  this  light 
grew  from  dimness  into  darkness,  we  filled  the  evening  air 
with  that  beautiful  hymn,  ' '  Sweet  Galilee, ' '  while  the  steady 
stroke  of  our  sturdy  boatmen  were  bearing  us,  wet,  tired, 
hungry  and  happy  to  our  tents  on  the  shore  below  Tiberias. 

And  we  will  be  pardoned,  I  know,  when  we  confess  that 
there  was  enough  sentiment  in  us  that  made  it  impossible 
to  dissociate  this  lake  from  the  works  and  words  and  bless- 

80 


ed  presence  of  Him  whose  glory  these  two  thousand  years 
has  lingered  here  and  whose  still  hovering  presence  added 
to  the  charm  of  our  first  and  last  closing  day  on  Galilee. 
•  The  two  preceding  sunsets  we  saw  from  the  water,  the 
two  following  froril  the  land.  Or  two  we  saw  from  boats 
and  two  from  trains. 

All  day  long  we  had  had  a  wild  and  wonderful  climb  out 
of  Palestine,  up  rugged  and  desolate  mountains,  across 
Sjnria's  plain  and  toward  the  close  of  day  were  drawing 
near  to  Damascus.  Our  train  was  going  north,  down  a 
gently  sloping  plain;  to  our  east  were  mountains,  and  to 
our  west  the  long  irregular  and  snow-clad  backbone  of  Mt. 
Hermon.  Behind  this  mountain  the  sun  was  soon  to  set. 
Above  lofty  Hermon,  circling  about  as  birds  making  ready 
for  their  evening  perch  were  some  banks  of  white  clouds. 
Between  these  clouds  and  the  mountain  was  a  narrow  clear 
space.  The  sun  was  making  ready  to  cross  this,  then  would 
be  the  end.  It  is  foolhardy  to  try  to  describe  it.  I  make  no 
such  attempt,  but  give  only  a  hint  here  and  there  to  help 
your  imagination  fill  out  the  glory  between. 

The  clouds,  taking  advantage  of  their  height,  caught  great 
annfuls  of  the  sun's  divinest  colors  and  flung  them  lavishly 
at  our  feet.  The  long  ridge  of  the  mountain,  as  the  sun 
dropped  behind  it,  turned  from  white  into  golden  snow — • 
golden  and  set  with  ten  million  diamonds  as  each  crystal 
glistened  and  scintillated  in  the  evening  glow.  Watch  the 
colors  change!  The  brilliant  bright  of  the  golden  snow  be- 
comes richer  and  darker;  one  by  one,  then  hundreds  by 
hundreds,  of  these  crystaline  diamonds  of  ice,  winked  wear- 
ily at  us  and  went  to  sleep,  till,  as  our  train  sped  on  and 
swerved  to  the  east,  only  a  soft  golden  glow  stood  out  be- 
fore the  oncoming  evening  star. 

An  early  breakfast  in  Athens,  a  four  hours'  ride  witli 
our  train  skirting  the  Bay  of  Salamis  and  the  Saronic  Gulf, 

81 


a  three  hours'  ramble  among  the  ruins  of  old  Corinth  and 
we  were  again  on  train  for  another  four  hours'  run  to  Pat- 
ras,  on  the  western  shore  of  Greece,  where  our  waiting  ship 
rode  at  anchor  in  the  Ionian  Sea.  Through  olive,  grape 
and  wheat  fields  we  sped,  with  mountains  to  our  south  and 
the  quiet  blue  of  the  Corinthian  Gulf  to  the  north  and  be- 
yond classic  and  snow-crowned  Parnassas.  Our  fourth  sun- 
set was  to  be  near  the  end  of  this  day's  journey  and  fitted 
perfectly  into  this  beautiful  Grecian  scene.  The  fact  is,  the 
sun  did  not  set  once  that  afternoon,  but  three  times.  This 
unusual  feat,  added  to  the  actual  charm,  is  why  I  am  tell- 
ing you  of  it.  As  the  sun  was,  as  one  would  say,  "a,  half- 
hour  high,"  there  came  directly  between  it  and  our  eyes  a 
great  mountain  across  the  gulf.  We  saw  the  sun  set  beliind 
this  mountain;  set  while  yet  it  was  day.  Another  ten  min- 
utes as  our  train  swiftly  followed  the  bending  track  as  it 
gTipped  the  curving  shore  and  we  were  beyond  that  large 
mountain  and  there  over  a  much  lower  mountain  was  the 
sun  with  another  soft  good-night  smile  at  us.  Here  we 
watched  the  second  sunset,  as  the  King  of  Day  quickly 
dropped  again  out  of  sight  and  was,  as  we  thought,  hurry- 
ing on  to  wake  up  the  Chinese.  But  as  we  were  in  a  strange 
land  and  therefore  expecting  strange  things,  we  kept  watch- 
ing to  see  if  something  else  would  not  happen,  or  at  least 
to  enjoy  the  stealing  on  of  darkness. 

But  instead  of  darkness  we  were  to  have  another  sunset. 
by  this  time  our  train,  nearing  Patras,  was  past  this  second 
mountain  and  out  yonder  in  the  Ionian  Sea  with  five  min- 
utes more  of  life,  was  our  same  old  sun,  getting  ready  for 
his  third  retiring  on  this  same  day.  With  face  bigger  and 
beaming  more  than  ever,  giving  us  a  gracious  good  night, 
pillowing  his  head  on  Ionia's  soft  and  heaving  bosom,  he 
drew  up  the  cover  of  the  deep.  And  God  slowly  drew  the 
curtains  of  the  coming  night  and  stationed  about  his  couch 

82 


a  thousand  shining  sentinels.  And  by  their  kindly  light,  in 
the  gloaming  of  that  Grecian  evening,  we  disembarked  from 
our  train  and  the  cheery  lamps  on  our  ship,  awaiting  us  in 
the  harbor,  invited  us  to  rest  and  to  our  further  voyage. 

Must  not  the  God  of  these  and  other  sunsets,  be  Himself 
a  God  of  beauty  and  glory?  Can  these  masterpieces  be, 
with  no  master?  How  wonderful  a  God  and  one  to  be  adored 
is  He  who  with  the  richest  pigments  of  earth  and  cloud  and 
heaven,  paints  on  the  broad  canvas  of  the  horizon  such 
matchless  moving  pictures  of  glory!  Shall  we  see  and 
praise  the  work  and  not  the  workman?  If  the  handiwork 
so  entrances,  how  much  more  the  fashioning  hand.  /So 
that  we,  as  truly  as  David,  may  say,  ^^The  heavens  declare 
the  glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth  His  handi- 
work." And  not  alone  in  these  isolated  cases  in  foreign 
lands,  but  as  God  maketh  the  sun  to  shine  and  to  set  for 
the  just  and  the  unjust,  and  sendeth  along  with  His  bless-, 
ing  the  early  and  latter  rain,  that  one  who  is  wise  will  see 
each  succeeding  day,  beauty  and  blessings  in  God's  world 
and  always  see  above  the  earthly,  the  heavenly,  in  the  gift 
the  Giver,  and  beyond  the  glory  that  now  is,  the  sure  prom- 
ise of  a  far  exceeding  glory,  yet  to  be. 


83 


FOUR  GREAT  CHURCHES. 


In  every  Southern  landscape,  whether  country  or  city, 
one  of  the  prominent  features  is  the  church  or  churches.  lu 
London  and  Rome,  even  in  pagan  Constantinople  and  Jerus- 
alem, the  places  of  worship  stand  out  in  bold  relief  from 
the  forests  of  buildings.  As  well  not  go  to  the  last  two 
cities  as  not  to  see  the  Mosques  of  Omar  and  St.  Sophia; 
and  no  one  has  been  to  the  mighty  capitals  on  the  Thames 
and  the  Tiber  who  has  not  seen  St.  Paul's  and  St.  Peter's. 
Of  these  four  places  of  worship  we  wish  to  speak.  The  first 
two  are  really  not  churches,  and  the  Moslem  would  be 
dreadfully  insulted  at  his  two  sacred  Mosques  being  put 
in  the  same  catalogue  with  sanctuaries  of  the  Infidel  of  the 
West.  But  if  the  Christian  can  stand  it,  the  pagan  will 
have  to  also. 

It  seems  invidious  in  speaking  of  mosques  to  leave  out 
Mahomet  Ali,  in  Cairo,  and  among  cathedrals,  stately  Notre 
Dame,  beside  the  Seine.  But  when  a  volume  might  be  writ- 
ten about  each  one  of  these,  it  seems  sufficiently  bold  in  the 
space  of  a  letter  to  attempt  these  four  chief  places  of  wor- 
ship. 

The  Mosque  of  Omar  has  its  name  from  General  Omai, 
not  because  he  was  particularly  pious,  even  after  the  Mos- 
lem fashion,  but  because  he  wrested  Jeinisalem  from  the 
hand  of  the  Christian.  The  other  part  of  its  name, 
'^Mosque,"  is  a  misnomer,  for  in  the  correct  sense  of  the 
word,  it  is  not  a  mosque  at  all.  It  lacks  the  necessary  min- 
aret, and  the  interior,  where  the  faithful  usually  worship, 
no  human  foot  is  allowed  ever  to  tread. 

For   situation,   this   mosque   is   beautiful   and    even   more 

84 


historic  than  beautiful.  It  is  not  only  in  Jerusalem,  but  on 
the  spot  in  that  holy  city  where  perhaps  nine-tenths  or  more 
of  the  interest  in  that  city  centers — the  temple  site.  There 
is  practical  agreement  that  this  mosque  is  on  Moriah,  where 
Abraham  offered  up  Isaac,  and  where  Solomon,  Zerrubbabel 
and  Herod  built  temples.  Any  building,  be  it  ever  so  rude, 
in  so  sacred  and  world-affecting  a  locality,  could  not  but  be 
famous.  But  the  Mosque  of  Omar  so  far  from  being  rude 
is  most  imposing,  of  richest  material,  of  most  symmetrical 
proportions   and   of  faultless   design. 

Of  octagonal  shape  (each  side  being  sixty-four  feet), 
with  many  massive  windows  of  exquisite  mosaic  of  glass  and 
marble,  with  graceful  arches  surmounted  by  an  immense 
gilt  dome,  the  exterior,  whether  viewed  from  the  Mount  of 
Olives  in  the  distance,  or  nearer  at  hand,  from  Calvary, 
Zion  or  Moriah  itself,  is  full  of  eye-satisfaction.  It  is  said 
to  be  the  finest  building  in  Asia,  and  some  have  pronounced 
it  the  most  beautiful  building  in  existence. 

The  interior  is  entirely  unique.  The  object  of  its  erec- 
tion seems  to  have  been  to  cover  and  guard  the  *'Dome  of 
the  Rock,"  which  is  alike  sacred  to  Moslem  and  Christian. 
Directly  under  the  dome  of  this  mosque,  guarded  from  in- 
trusion by  a  strong  railing,  in  subdued  light  approaching 
semi-darkness,  is  the  natural  rock  (57  by  43  feet)  on  which 
for  a  thousand  years  Israel  offered  sacrifices.  Two  concen- 
tric circles  of  marble  columns  make  two  circular  corridors 
around  this  sacred  rock.  The  upper  portion  of  the  interior 
wall  is  an  artistic  design  in  mosaic  and  above  that  a  band 
of  deep  blue  on  which  in  gilt  Arabic  letters  are  texts  from 
the  Koran.  And  pagan  temple  though  it  be,  we  found  here 
a  delicious  quietness,  a  restful  refuge  and  a  sweet  solem- 
nity as  well  as  a  lingering  echo  of  that  Divine  voice  heard 
so  often  here  in  the  long  ago. 

Between   the  Golden  Horn  and  Marmora,  in  the  city  of 

85 


Constantine  (for  such  is  the  meaning  of  Constantinople), 
hard  by  where  two  great  seas  and  continents  meet  and 
where  meet  also  paganism  and  Christianity,  as  well  as  the 
orient  and  the  Occident,  stands  magnificent  .St.  Sophia.  For 
more  than  a  thousand  years  this  city,  which  then  lay  on 
the  Asiatic  shore  of  the  Bosphorus,  was  called  Chalcedon, 
till  indeed  the  Greeks  settled  on  the  opposite  shores  in  Eu- 
rope and  called  the  city  Byzantium.  This  name  in  turn 
gave  way  in  the  fourth  century  for  the  name  of  the  great 
ruler  of  the  new  empire,  whose  capital  it  became.  In  this 
city  of  three  names  and  three  millenniums,  in  both  Europe 
and  Asia,  and  on  the  Golden  Horn,  the  Bosphorus  and  the 
Sea  of  Marmora,  swarm  legends  and  fairly  teem  history  of 
contending  empires  and  religions.  So  at  this  meeting  place 
of  continents  and  seas,  of  races  and  religions,  of  myth  and 
fact,  on  the  site  of  an  early  heathen  temple  (and  thus  from 
time  immemorial  a  place  of  worship)  Constantine  erected 
the  first  St.  Sophia,  and  not  willing  to  name  it  after  any 
man,  dedicated  it  to  Christ  himself  under  the  title  of  Sancta 
Sophia,  or  the  Holy  "Wisdom. 

Here  in  404  the  eloquent  Chrysostom  preached  and  so 
denounced  imperial  sins  that  he  was  banished.  The  popu- 
lace were  so  enraged  by  the  preacher's  banishment  that  they 
burned  to  the  ground  the  noble  structure — not  a  bad  pro- 
ceeding when  the  uncensorable  preacher  is  so  treated.  A 
second  building  was  burned  in  the  sixth  century,  when  Jus- 
tinian built  the  present  imposing  structure.  An  angel  is 
said  to  have  given  him  the  plan  in  a  dream.  The  emperor 
worked  with  the  men  and  angels  were  popularly  believed  to 
have  helped.  On  Christmas  eve,  573,  the  emperor  entered 
the  completed  structure  and  exclaimed,  *^  Solomon,  I  have 
conquered  thee."  For  eight  hundred  years  it  continued  a 
Christian  church.  After  centuries  of  vain  efforts  by  the 
Moslems,  Mohammed  II,  in  1453,  took  the  city  and  rode  his 
horse  into   St.   Sophia,   and   high   on   a   marble   column   the 

86 


bloody  print  of  his  hand  is  still  shown  the  traveller.  The 
Greek  altar  was  taken  down,  the  minaret  was  erected,  and 
every  day  since  from  it  the  muezzin  has  called  the  faithful 

to  prayer. 

No  adequate  idea  can  be  given  of  this  magnificent  edifice. 
It  is  so  enclosed  on  the  exterior  by  surrounding  buildings 
that  its  vastness  and  richness  are  not  realized  till  the  trav- 
eler enters.    Inside,  with  slippered  feet  and  hungry  eyes  we 
leisurely  strolled  under  the  vaulted  dome,  between  rows  of 
exquisite  marble  and  poiphyry  columns  and  around  the  whole 
circuit  of  its  many-niched  walls.     With  the  dome  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  feet  above  our  heads  and  broad  naves  be- 
fore us,  the  impression  was   of  vastness.     Standing,   as  it 
seems,  on  acres  of  richest  Persian  rugs,  surrounded  by  pillars 
of  serpentine  and  porphyry,  some  taken  from  the  temple  of 
Diana  in  Ephesus,   others  from  the  temple  of  the  Sun   at 
Baalbek,    besides    other    booty    from    conquered    cities    and 
above  on  all  sides  in  eastern  lavishness,  gold  figures,  letter. 
ing  and  emblems— the  impression  was  of  richness.    High  on 
the  walls  in  large  graceful  Arabic  script  of  gold,  the  words: 
''There   is    but    one    god,    and    Mahomed    is    his   prophet,'' 
silently  proclaims  Moslemism.     While  here  and  there,   still 
visible  despite  the  efforts  to  erase,  are   Christian  emblems 
and  faint  yet  traceable,  over  the  former  place  of  the  altar 
is  to  be  seen  the  gilt  figure  of  Christ  in  the  act  of  blessing 
—a  prophecy  this  of  the  unconquerable  Christ  who  will  yet 
again  receive  worship  here.     To  a  soldier,  destroying  these 
Christian  emblems,  Mahomet  the  conqueror,  killing  him  at 
a  blow,  said:     ''Let  these  things  be;  who  knows  but  that 
in  another  age  they  can  serve  another  religion  than  that  of 

Islam."  ^  ^     ^ 

On  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  near  the  old  Caesar  homestead, 
and  where  dwelt  also  wealth  and  law,  power  and  profligacy, 
stands  the  most  bewilderingly  wonderful  building  we  have 
ever  seen— St.  Peter's.  Joining  it  is  the  White  House  of 
Romanism,  the  largest  palace  in  the  world,  with  its  mora 

87 


than  eleven  hundred  rooms.  Here  more  powerful  than  the 
old-time  Roman  Emperors,  lived  in  the  middle  ages  the  Ro- 
man Pontiff  and  here  he  still  lives,  though  shorn  of  his 
former  power.  Here  also  dwell  a  small  army  of  shrewdest 
diplomats  and  ecclesiastical  statesmen,  and  in  adjoining 
quarters  are  the  famous  Vatican  galleries  of  painting  and 
sculpture.  Here  in  closest  juxtaposition  is  the  trinity — St. 
Peter's,  the  Vatican  and  the  Vatican  Museums — that  with 
religion,  art,  architecture  and  music  attracts  the  world.  It 
was  a  wise,  if  not  wily  churchman  who  thus  located  St. 
Peter's,  it  was  consummate  genius  and  skill  that  designed 
and  built  this  imperial  building,  it  was  the  gold  of  the  world 
that  footed  the  bills  and  today  it  abides,  a  ceaseless  wonder 
in  this  world  so  full  of  wonders.  The  Piazza  of  St.  Peter's 
is  a  square  or  open  court  (a  home-made  North  Carolinian 
would  call  it  the  front  yard)  surrounded  by  an  immense 
colonnade  of  three  rows  of  pillars,  sixty-four  feet  high, 
upon  the  top  of  which  are  balustrades  with  162  statues  of 
various  and  sundry  saints.  In  the  center  of  this  piazza  is 
a  tapering  obelisk  from  Heliopolis,  on  each  side  of  which 
is  a  generous  fountain,  while  up  a  flight  of  steps  approach- 
ing the  church  are  statues  of  Paul  and  Peter,  and  on  top  of 
the  church  walls  are  large  figures  of  Christ  and  the  apostles. 
This  ''front  yard"  is  spacious  and  regal  enough  to  prepare 
you  for  great  things  within.  And  this  preparation  is  no 
false  alarm.  One  is  here  never  allowed  to  lose  sight  of 
Peter.  Within  these  walls  he  is  omnipresent  in  emblem. 
Beside  the  statue  guarding  the  entrance,  an  inimitable 
mosaic  of  him  walking  on  the  water  is  before  the  door 
within  the  vestibule,  down  the  main  nave  is  a  bronze  figure 
with  his  much-kissed  toe  and  around  the  base  of  the  central 
dome  are  the  words,  in  Latin,  ''Thou  art  Peter,  and  npon 
this  rock  I  will  build  my  church,  and  I  will  give  unto  thee 
the  keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  Further  on  is  the 
Altar  of  St.  Peter,  under  which  some  of  his  bones  rest  (his 
bones   are  in  great   demand,   and   from  the   various   places 

88 


claiming  them  he  must  have  had  an  extra  set),  and  where 
only  the  Pope  may  read  mass;  still  farther  is  the  bronze 
throne  holding  the  wooden  chair  reputed  to  have  been  used 
by  Peter.  Though  figures  are  dead  things,  yet  it  will  help 
to  picture  the  vastness  here  to  tell  the  complete  length  is  613 
feet,  the  width  446  feet,  and  the  interior  height  of  the  dome 
is  440  feet.  It  is  said  80,000  people  on  Easter,  find  standing 
room  within  these  walls.  This  immense  space  from  the  tes- 
selated  marble  floor  to  the  emblematic  designs  on  the  arching 
dome  and  from  wall  to  wall  is  filled  with  such  a  wealth  of 
statuary,  paintings,  mosaics  and  gold  decorations  as  to  daze 
the  ordinary  mortal.  All  about  are  many  chapels  and  altars 
with  burning  lamps  and  kneeling  worshippers,  w^hile  again 
the  whole  interior  is  at  once  a  graveyard,  a  Catholic  Hall  of 
Fame,  a  gallery  or  series  of  galleries  of  paintings  and  sculp- 
ture and  of  music  and  architecture.  Again  I  want  to  invoke 
the  help  of  Arithmetic.  The  cost  of  the  main  part  of  this 
building  was  $60,000,000,  but  the  whole  of  St.  Peter's,  with 
its  priceless  furnishings,  is  worth  many  times  that  amount. 
I  believe  it  was  to  raise  $50,000,000  for  its  completion  that 
indulgences  were  put  on  the  market  and  that  a  too  indus- 
trious sale  af  this  novel  and  popular  article  of  commerce 
by  one  John  Tetzel  aroused  Martin  Luther,  who,  under  God 
aroused  Europe,  which  latter  arousement  is  familiarly  known 
as  the  Reformation. 

One  evening  alone,  I  heard  the  Sistine  choir  sing  at  Ves- 
pers, as  I  strolled  quietly  around  and  through  the  sombre 
shadows  of  the  tombs  of  popes  and  prelates,  martyrs  and 
fonfessors,  when  all  had  gone  except  a  stray  worshipper  or 
\4sitor  who  happened  like  myself  to  have  tarried  late.  The 
oncoming  darkness,  the  smoking  incense  and  burning  candles 
on  different  altars,  the  silence,  the  solemnity,  the  flitting 
here  and  there  with  soft  footfall  of  robed  figures,  made  a 
scene  or  rather  an  experience  weird,  almost  uncanny  and 
unforgettable. 

''Impressions?"    you    say.      Without    the    slightest    irre- 

89 


verence,  I  felt  that  this  and  similar  churches  have  become 
more  sights  for  tourists  than  sanctuaries  for  worshippers. 
I  disliked  the  guides  and  guards,  though  I  suppose  these 
are  necessary,  the  mendicants  and  venders,  the  fees  and  the 
general  air  of  a  museum  or  show  rather  than  of  a  church.  I 
felt  when  I  saw  the  box  and  above  ^t  the  sign,  ''For  the 
decoration  of  the  cathedral,"  that  I'd  come  nearer  giving 
something  to  defray  the  expense  of  taking  down  some  of  the 
surplus  of  the  decorative  commodity.  It  seemed  to  me  these 
obscured  rather  than  revealed  God.  I  felt  that  religion  so 
near  its  alleged  fount  should  have  less  of  formalism  and 
more  of  spiritual  spontaneity.  And  I  felt  that  such  mag- 
nificence did  not  comport  with  such  misery  and  poverty  as 
abounds  in  Italy.  I  felt  like  saying  with  one  of  old,  though 
I  hope  from  a  purer  motive.  ''Why  was  not  this  .  .  .  sold 
.  .  .  and  given  to  the  poor."  Yet  for  whatever  of  God  any 
soul  may  have  found,  so  far  from  denying,  would  I  rather 
rejoice.  I  was  glad  it  is  not  mine  to  judge.  And  in  the 
presence  of  all  but  infinite  complexity,  I  felt  grateful  for 
the  simplicity  of  my  North  Carolina  church.  And  until  the 
day  God  is  pleased  to  revive  and  purge  the  worship  of  these 
many  millions  of  my  brother-men  who  bow  at  this  and  kin- 
dred shrines,  may  we  trust  that  through  the  labyrinth  of 
ceremony  and  the  maze  of  encumbering  adornment  that  they 
might  not  entirely  miss  seeing  and  knowing  Jesus  the  Christ. 
St.  Paul's — time  and  space  positively  forbid. 


90 


FOUR  EUROPEANISMS. 


Like  oiir  country  Europe  and  the  farther  East  have  quite 
an  assortment  of  isms  and  like  ours  theirs  are  good,  bad  and 
indifferent.  At  least  I  am  positive  about  the  bad  variety 
and  I  trust  that  the  first  mentioned  kind  was  more  numer- 
ous than  I  actually  saw.  To  see  and  study  these  systems 
of  social,  political  and  moral  order  was  to  me  more  interest- 
ing than  to  ramble  through  castles.  The  former  are  factors 
in  the  titanic  struggle  of  the  present.  The  latter  only  sur- 
vivors of  the  finished  combat  of  yesterday. 

Militaryism. 

One  of  the  most  striking  differences,  occupationally 
speaking,  between  Europe  and  America  is  the  absence  here 
and  the  omnipresence  there  of  the  soldier.  One  may  travel 
thousands  of  miles  here  and  not  see  a  soldier,  much  less 
forts  and  barracks,  but  in  Europe  the  traveller  encounters 
with  a  monotonous  regularity  battleships  by  sea  and  forts 
and  soldiers  by  land.  We  frequently  saw  from  our  car  win- 
dows cavalry  and  infantry  on  the  march  through  the  coun- 
try or  drilling  on  their  numerous  parade  gTounds.  They 
swarmed  in  every  city  and  we  soon  learned  whenever  we 
saw  an  immense  barn-like  building  to  ask  no  questions  but 
call  it  '' barracks"  and  go  on.  I  know  full  well  how  the 
ordinary  mortal  hates  figures,  yet  they  are  necessary  evils 
and  sometimes  serve  you  a  good  turn.  For  instance,  the 
figures  I  am  going  to  give  below  will  fill  this  column  about 
as  thick  as  the  foreign  landscape  is  filled  with  soldiers  and 
so  help  you  to  some  appreciation  of  how  big  and  important 
is  my  first  ism.  The  standing  army  of  Europe  is  nearly 
5,000,000  men,  while  that  of  the  United  States  is  only 
56,000.    That  is  its  size  in  time  of  peace  when  there's  noth- 

91 


ing  to  do  but  drill  and  make  faces  across  the  frontier  at 
the  other  fellow.  The  military  strings  are  so  fixed  that  on 
a  war  footing  the  ai-mies  of  Europe  number  only  37,000,000 
men!  And  very  naturally  this  costs  something.  The  mili- 
tary bill  of  Europe  in  time  of  peace  is  in  round  numbers 
$2,000,000,000  per  year.  That  is,  two  thousand  millions,  or 
enough  to  build  20,000  good  sized  cotton  mills  or,  to  better 
purpose,  enough  to  flood  the  heathen  world  with  the  gospel 
and  have  a  snug  sujn  to  help  Europe  feed  her  large  pauper 
class.  France's  army  in  time  of  peace  is  613,000;  in  other 
words,  though  smaller  in  area  than  Texas,  her  army  is  eleven 
times  as  big  as  that  of  the  whole  United  States.  Italy,  less 
than  one-thirty-fourth  the  size  of  our  country,  has  260,000 
men  in  her  army  or  nearly  five  times  as  many  as  we  have. 
In  proportion  to  area  Italy's  army  is  170  times  as  large  as 
ours.  And  all  these  thousands  just  to  protect  against  the 
general  public,  Vesuvius,  earthquake-riven  Reggio,  a  grotto 
or  two  and  a  few  ruins !  Switzerland,  less  than  one-third  the 
size  of  North  Carolina,  stuck  on  the  top  of  the  dome  of  Eu- 
rope, where  an  invading  army  if  unopposed  could  hardly  get 
to,  you  would  think  would  have  a  very  small  army.  Yet  her 
standing  (and  sliding)  army  numbers  145,000,  or  nearly 
three  times  that  of  our  land,  which  comprises  virtually  a 
continent  beside  governing  great  islands  in  distant  oceans. 
But  those  glaciers  must  be  defended  at  all  hazards! 

These  five  million  men  out  of  the  producing  and  in  the 
consuming  class  have  helped  to  make  extremely  grave  the 
economic  question  which  stirs  and  threatens  Europe  today. 
To  this  we  shall  refer  again.  Then  not  less  important  and 
far-reaching  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  social,  moral  and  religious 
problems  raised  by  such  large  armies.  These  men  impressed 
by  law  into  the  service,  away  from  home  and  its  healthful 
ties,  out  of  the  ordinary  and  natural  pursuits  create  a  diffi- 
cult moral  problem.  For  the  soldier's  camp  is  by  no  means 
a  camp-meeting,  neither  a  Sunday  school,  but  religiously 
speaking  a  difficult  and  unfavorable  field  for  moral  and  spir- 

92 


itual  culture.  And  I  do  not  write  unsympathetieally  about 
the  army  for  I  am  a  soldier  myself — have  I  not  fought  val- 
iantly for  three  summers  at  Morehead  City  and  last  summer 
at  Chickamauga  with  the  invincible  First  North  Carolina 
Infantry? — but  like  all  sensible  people,  I  recognize  the 
necessity  even  in  this  land  for  a  standing  army  and  even  in 
these  pipingest  times  of  peace.  I  quite  love  the  soldier  of 
my  own  land  but  the  illimitable  magnitude  of  the  armies  of 
Europe,  all  but  overcame  me. 

Clericalism. 

This  ism — one  of  the  sleekest  of  the  lot — got  onto  my 
nerves,  too.  Next  to  the  soldier  in  visibility  and  multi- 
plicity seemed  to  be  the  priest,  who,  uniformed,  was  like 
the  soldier,  an  easy  mark  for  identification.  Sometimes 
they  went  singly,  more  often  by  twos  and  not  infrequently 
in  droves  or  squads.  From  the  signs  I  saw  and  the  expres- 
sions I  heard,  though  its  a  sad  statement  to  make,  yet  T 
believe  it  is  true  at  least  in  Italy  and  France  that  the  aver- 
age man  hates  the  clergy  and  the  church.  In  Rome,  I  was 
told  that  many  who  keep  the  forms  of  religion,  in  their 
hearts  mistrust  and  dislike  the  church  and  its  leaders.  True, 
in  this  land  such  men  are  to  be  found,  but  they  are  excep- 
tional rather  than  general.  And  we  all  know  that  the 
church  and  her  ministry  in  doing  their  duty  will  often  make 
enemies.  That  suggests  the  question,  why  this  unfriendly 
attitude  of  Europe's  masses  towards  the  church?  (By 
church  I  mean,  unless  expressly  stated,  the  Roman  Catholic 
church).  No  one  statement  can  give  the  whole  answer. 
Her  corrupt  creed  and  life,  her  cumbrous  forms  go  far  to- 
wards answering  the  question,  but  the  reason  I  wish  to 
speak  of,  specially,  is  because  the  church  is  in  politics  up 
to  the  hilt  and  is  a  past-master  at  the  game.  Thus  the 
church  is  a  party,  rather  a  leader,  in  engendering  the  most 
bitter  partisan  prejudices  and  enmities  that  can  charac- 
terize politics.  And  rightly,  the  church  must  take  its  part 
of  the  '^ cussing"  and  bitterness.     And  usually  the  church, 

93 


©specially  in  Latin  Europe,  is  with  the  classes  against  the 
masses,  with  the  reactionary  against  the  progressive,  and 
with  the  mediaeval  against  the  modern.  And  the  reason  the 
church  is  in  politics,  ordinarily  at  least,  is  the  same  reason 
the  politician  is  in  it — ^for  self.  This  makes  of  the  church 
and  religion,  too  (for  the  masses  know  nothing  about  relig- 
ion apart  from  the  Roman  Catholic  church)  a  political  issue 
and  a  very  mean  issue  at  that.  All  are  familiar  with  the 
bitter  struggle  that  led  up  to  the  separation  of  Church  and 
State  in  France  two  years  ago.  ,Some  will  recall  the  fierce 
struggle  in  Belgium  in  the  recent  spring  elections,  how  bit- 
terly Romanism  fought  for  continued  supremacy  and  how 
narrowly  she  won.  Towering  above  all  other  questions  iu 
that  election  was  what  might  be  termed  the  European  Issue 
— Clericalism.  In  Italy  the  same  feeling  of  anti-clericalism 
seemed  to  be  strong,  but  for  lack  of  a  leader,  the  opportune 
time  and  perhaps  other  reasons,  is  lying  low  at  present. 
Right  now  Spain  is  on  the  point  of  revolution — the  one 
issue  being  clericalism.  The  Spanish  Premier  sizes  up  the 
situation  in  these  words,  '^  Different  political  groups  have 
different  ideas,  but  they  are  one  against  clericalism." 

I  may  be  mistaken,  but  rising  above  all  Protestant,  much 
more  Presbyterian  bias,  the  condition  of  the  church  gener- 
ally in  Europe  impressed  me  as  being  deplorably  sad,  and 
incompetent  and  hopeless  in  grappling  with  the  present  con- 
ditions. But  this  darkness  would  be  really  delightful  if 
one  knew  it  presaged  another  Reformation. 

Socialism. 

Prominent  among  the  progeny  of  militaryism,  relict  of  the 
late  feudalism,  is  socialism.  This  is  a  very  large  family 
whose  members  have  varying  degrees  of  badness  and  per- 
haps of  goodness.  Some  of  these  socialistic  children  are 
repulsive  and  others  have  more  attractive  features.  So 
many  kinds  of  socialism  makes  it  impossible  to  give  an 
accurate  definition.  It  is  an  economic  and  social  revolt 
against  the  old  order  of  things  in  both  Church  and  State 

94 


and  to  help  carry  its  point  has,  of  course,  entered  politics. 
Every  law-makino:  body  of  Europe  has  Socialistic  members 
and  socialism  polls  in  Europe  nearly  6,000,000  votes  and  has 
650  papers.  Germany  alone  has  3,000,000  socialist  votes, 
next  in  strength  comes  France,  then  Austria-Hungary,  Bel- 
gium, Italy,  Great  Britain,  etc.  The  writer  is  many  leagues 
removed  from  being  a  socialist,  yet  if  bis  lot  had  been  cast 
in  France,  Germany  or  Italy,  he  would  be  very  much  nearer 
one  than  he  is  in  this  land  of  civil  and  religious  freedom 
and  of  equal  opportunity.  Without  excusing  any  of  the 
extremes  of  socialism  or  apologizing  for  its  errors,  it  does 
seem  that  conditions  in  Europe  furnish  considerable  war- 
rant for  the  rise  of  this  new  cult.  Human  nature  can  stand 
a  great  deal,  but  it  can't  and  happily  won't  stand  every- 
thing, and  against  the  mediaevalism  of  Church  and  State, 
represented  in  part  by  militaryism  and  clericalism  of  which 
we  have  spoken,  socialism  stands  as  a  protest — a  misdirected 
and  perverted  protest  perhaps,  yet  a  protest  vigorous  and 
not  without  results.  And  the  wise  prince  and  priest  instead 
of  sneering  at  it  will  study  themselves  to  find  what  in  them 
makes  possible  the  rise  of  such  a  vagary.  To  one  reared  iu 
the  thought  of  the  South — the  old  South  to  large  degree, 
blessed  land  where  among  other  things  freedom  means  the 
freedom  from  so  motley  a  gang  of  isms  of  malcontent  and 
selfishness — socialism,  its  name,  principles,  and  methods 
were  repugnant,  yet  may  it  not  be  that  in  the  strange  provi- 
dence of  God,  that  He  is  mining  Europe  with  this  new  ex- 
plosive for  an  epochal  overturning,  which  will  clear  away 
some  of  the  hindering  rubbish  of  dead  centuries  and  usher 
in  a  happier  day? 

Atheism. 

This  is  the  darkest  ism  of  all.  I  know  the  danger,  Elijah- 
like, of  saying,  '^I,  even  I  only,  am  left.''  And  I  am  there- 
fore making  a  liberal  allowance  for  the  personal  equation. 
After  all  these  precautionary  steps,  it  still  seems  beyond 
doubt  that  there  is  abroad  over  Europe  and  in  high  favor, 

95 


a  spirit  of  irreligion  reaching  very  often  to  the  extreme  of 
the  baldest  Atheism.  After  reading  the  signs,  as  well  as 
between  the  lines,  and  after  receiving  indefinable  intuitions, 
reluctantly  I  had  to  believe  that  a  sadly  large  multitude  of 
Europe's  seething  millions  have  settled  down  to  a  life  in 
whose  theory  and  practice  there  is  no  god.  This  condition, 
whether  called  Atheism  or  by  some  softer  term,  has  as  one 
of  the  contributing  causes — clericalism. 

Starting  from  the  Roman   church,    with  its  out-of-touch- 
ness  with  man,  many  millions  have  drifted,  till  they  became 
churchless.     Here  these  spiritual  wanderings  were  but  be- 
gun.   On  and  on  they  would  go,  some  to  a  pure  godlessness, 
some  to  a  Christless  rationalism,  other  to  commercialism  or 
pleasure,  till  a  multitude  whom  no  man  can  number  can  be 
described  by  no  better  words  than  Paul's  ** having  no  hope 
and   without  God  in  the  world."     And  that  I  would   call 
Atheism.  Of  course  there  are  bright  spots  to  break  the  dread-, 
ful  monotony  of  darkness.    Europe  has  her  remnant  accord- 
ing to  the  election  of  grace  and  no  one  dare  say  it  is  a 
small  remnant  either.     Again  the  writer  has  no  figures  to 
go  by,  even  figures  of  church  connection  being  far  from  con- 
clusive.    The  traveler,  in  studying  the  heart  condition  of  a 
continent,   must  judge  largely  by  impressions,  where  it   is 
easy  to  err  and  impossible  to  be  accurate,  much  less  infal- 
lible. And  the  foregoing  is  given  only  as  impressions,  yet  im- 
pressions not  hastily,  but  seriously  and  reluctantly  formed. 

In  our  own  land  there  is  very  much  godlessness,  but  for 
her  comparatively  pure  religion,  her  separation  of  Church 
and  iState,  her  freedom,  and  her  innocence  of  possessing  so 
much  governmental  rubbish  and  ecclesiastical  junk,  I  came 
home  devoutly  thanjs:ful.  And  above  these  learned  nations 
across  the  Atlantic,  with  their  ancient  lore,  it  seemed  to  me 
that  the  world  must  look,  not  to  Rome  or  Berlin  or  Paris, 
for  the  path  to  civil  liberty,  and  for  the  matured  fruit  of 
the  religion  of  Jesus,  and  for  the  evangelization  of  the 
world,  but  under  God  to  that  newly  chosen  people  of  God's 
providence,  in  the  West,  where  far  from  the  ruins  of  em- 
pires and  religions,  God  has  in  mercy  cast  our  lot. 

96 


